Yorkshire CCC to improve live stream and keep it free at point of cricketing delivery

Yorkshire are now looking to recruit several casual staff as camera operators to add to their current production crew, plus matchday commentators for white-ball games.

The club is hoping to continue with the BBC Radio Leeds commentary for County Championship fixtures, subject to a new deal being struck between the BBC and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) for ball-by-ball coverage of county cricket.

The latest four-year arrangement between the parties ended last summer and allowed each ball of every fixture in the Championship, the T20 Blast and the One-Day Cup to be broadcast alongside streaming visuals.

Sources have indicated that a new deal is likely to be struck, although details have yet to be finalised.

Sam Gascoyne, Yorkshire’s head of marcomms, said: “We’ve invested into the stream over the last few years to enhance the quality, and now we’ve been able to secure a partner to help us to continue with that.

“It will allow us to take the quality of the stream to the next level and also to keep the stream free as well, so we’re not having to explore whether it’s pay-per-view or anything of that nature.

“That’s a really big one for us, because our preference is to keep it as accessible for as many people as possible.

“We’re in a really good place with the quality that we have, and hopefully these improvements will make it even better.”

More than 30 million views were recorded across the county live streams last summer, with fans tuning in from all over the world.

Over 1.6m watched Yorkshire’s men’s and women’s cricketers in action, with the stream shown on the club’s YouTube channel.

Streams have become increasingly popular in recent years, accelerating significantly post-pandemic, with the visuals enhanced by the BBC’s expert teams of commentators in England and Wales, including Jonathan Doidge for Radio Leeds.

Yorkshire’s stream is now expected to have eight-to-nine cameras and the club is hoping that the new white-ball commentaries will be augmented by expert insights from former players.

“There has been a massive shift towards these live streams following the pandemic,” added Gascoyne.

“Consequently, there has been an increasing expectation to take the standard to broadcast quality.

“Each county takes different approaches to its stream - some, such as Leicestershire and Kent, have even trialled charging.

"We run ours in-house, so our team completely set-ups and runs everything, and hopefully it will continue to go from strength to strength.”

For further details and information on how to apply for the camera operator/commentary vacancies, visit yorkshireccc.com