ECB Confirms Youtube Ashes Coverage
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has confirmed its live streaming partnership with YouTube for this summer’s Investec Ashes Series, with the competition set to be shown online in 53 countries across mainland Europe and Latin America.
The partnership – which excludes the UK and Ireland – will make live coverage of England’s five-game Ashes Test match series against Australia available free of charge this summer to cricket fans on the Google-owned video-sharing site.
Coverage will be carried in 42 countries on the European mainland and 11 in Latin America.
One-minute highlights packages from each session will be available to viewers of the ECB channel across the world, including the UK and Ireland, where the live TV rights are held exclusively by Sky Sports.
ECB chief executive David Collier, said: ‘This is the ECB’s first venture into live streaming of cricket online, so is groundbreaking territory for us. We receive numerous requests from cricket fans in regions where there is no broadcast TV offering, and therefore we are delighted that many will be able to enjoy this Investec Ashes Series. It is also important that we play a role in the expansion of the game to countries that do not traditionally play nor watch the sport.’
YouTube senior director Steve Nuttall added: ‘Our partnership with the ECB expands the reach of the Investec Ashes Series to new countries and to YouTube’s younger, connected audience. We’re delighted to see more top quality cricket on YouTube.’
ECB continues to expand its digital services – with fans enjoying over 1.5m views of free to view video content in 2013 alone, watching over 2m minutes of footage.
The YouTube channel also offers highlights of every Investec Test, NatWest ODI & T20, LV= County Championship and Yorkshire Bank 40 matches, as well as behind-the-scenes features and player interviews.
Meanwhile, as part of the RISE campaign, messages of support have come flooding in from the nation’s celebs, check them out at Sport Industry TV.
