In Australia and England the news providers have got certain limitations, beyond that they cannot take things forward. This is the reason why the news relative to BCCI or India easily gets leaked against the other leading cricketing nations.
Yes, I absolutely agree. We all know that in Australia or England if a news report does actually cross certain limits, it is going to be facing some serious issues. But in India, if you have friends in powerful places, you are not going to face too much of a problem, doesn't matter what you do. I am not saying that England and Australia are absolutely the opposite. But in India having friends in good places will save you from a lot of things which if happened in Australia or England, you might necessarily not be able to get away with.
https://www.icc-cricket.com/media-releases/3039247
And in case of England, the deal with Sky Sports is for 8 years, and not 4 years as you are claiming. As per the ICC, this was a "direct contractual relationship" between the two sides and no bidding was involved. And I won't be surprised if the $400 million figure that you have mentioned, if it was for a 4-year period. But for 8-year period, the above mentioned amount sounds too low for me. And now coming to Australia, in normal circumstances, the media rights are sold at one-third to half of that in the UK. So it maybe around $150 to $200 million.
Even if both countries fetched a $500 Million, it's not a good sign and looks undervalued or call it Indian media rights were overvalued. I'm sure it won't sit well with the BCCI-Indian broadcasters and rightly so.
This is a huge difference when compared with Indian media rights. Well, I should say BCCI media rights. Personally, I think that the ECB and CA media rights have been undervalued. And of course, I also agree that this is going to cause a lot of controversies as well.