London, 5 June 2009
The International Cricket Council (ICC) has appointed IMG Sports Media as its fixed media rights holder for all its major events.
Under the terms of the agreement, IMG will have the right to produce and distribute films and other programming based on ICC major events sold or supplied on disc, memory stick and other such physical devices. This also includes digital distribution via mechanisms such as download to rent (DTR) and download to own (DTO).
IMG is already the ICC’s audio broadcast rights-holder through to 2015 and with this licensing arrangement, will be able to dovetail much of the work it does already with this new fixed media category.
The agreement covers all major ICC events (ICC Cricket World Cup, ICC Champions Trophy and ICC World Twenty20) from now through to the end of 2011 but is also back-dated to include the ICC World Twenty20 2007.
"This is another exciting development for cricket fans right around the world," said Campbell Jamieson, ICC General Manager – Commercial.
"IMG Sports Media has excellent credentials in the area of fixed media rights and has worked successfully for many years with leading sports properties such as the IRB Rugby World Cup and majors from golf (The Open Championship) and tennis (Wimbledon).
"The creation and sale of fixed media products forms another source of revenue for the ICC to invest back into cricket and it also serves to promote the sport in markets where TV and radio broadcast may not have been readily available," he said.
"The fact that this is a longer-term agreement than previous ones means there will be a greater degree of consistency across all our major events, which is is in keeping with the ICC commercial philosophy of generating product quality and commercial value over a longer time period," he added.
"IMG Media is thrilled to be working with the ICC to offer cricket fans world-wide the opportunity to watch their favourite teams, players and events time and time again," said Richard Wise, senior vice-president of IMG Media
"IMG Media's world-wide distribution capabilities combined with the global interest in ICC Cricket makes this a great partnership which we are delighted to part of," he added.
About IMG Sports Media
IMG Sports Media, the sports production and distribution division of IMG Worldwide, is the world’s largest independent producer and distributor of sports programming, offering the market an extensive catalogue of more than 18,000 hours of television, online, mobile and radio sports content across 240 categories of sports, including golf, soccer, tennis, cricket, cycling, motor sports and mixed martial arts. IMG Sports Media also represents the broadcast rights to many of the world’s premier sporting events and maintains the world’s largest sports archive with more than 250,000 hours of footage.
ICC MEDIA RELEASE