Lancashire will take their County Championship livestream behind a paywall for the remainder of the season in a potentially radical change to the way domestic cricket is broadcast.
For around a decade, counties have provided free-to-air streams via YouTube and their own websites for fans to watch all domestic matches not broadcast by Sky, which holds the rights.
Lancashire have long been seen as one of the standard-setting counties when it comes to livestreaming, with dozens of cameras and welcoming former players-turned-broadcasters such as David “Bumble” Lloyd and Paul Allott as commentators and pundits.
But they are set to change their broadcasting model which could spark other clubs across the county circuit to follow suit.
Lancashire are planning to introduce a paywall for non-members to view the stream of their men’s county matches – championship, MetroBank One-Day Cup and Vitality Blast – for the remainder of the season via the club’s Netflix-style streaming platform, LancsTV.
Members of Lancashire CCC will get access for free, but non-members, including opposition fans, are expected to be charged £20 for a season’s pass. The club are thought to be exploring whether a pay-per-match or day model is possible.
Meanwhile on YouTube, Lancashire will broadcast commentary over a live scorecard, with in-play highlights for free.
The paid product, meanwhile, will feature multiple manned cameras following the ball, plus specialist commentary and extra interviews with players and staff. Lancashire hope the stream will be seen as a perk of membership, and encourage new members to join.
All Lancashire women’s matches will remain free to view.
For the men, it will be some weeks before the change kicks in, because Lancashire have away games against Gloucestershire and Durham over the next fortnight, then a bye week. Their next match at Emirates Old Trafford is on May 8, when the paywall product will be launched.
Lancashire’s stream of Monday’s thrilling victory over Derbyshire, with James Anderson to the fore, was viewed 38,000 times on YouTube.
Lancashire are not the first county to experiment with charging for their stream. In 2023, Kent tried introducing a paywall, charging £5.99 to non-members for their Vitality Blast home matches. It is understood that while there was reasonable uptake, the extra revenue provided did not outweigh the extra cost of enhancing the stream, or the intangible value brought by the reach of a free product.
But in the three years since then, county streams have taken further leaps forward, and Lancashire’s decision comes at a time when clubs are wrestling with how to make broadcasts wash their own faces. Counties with leading streams are understood to spend around £250,000 per season on putting them out, with those who used to have more rudimentary offerings now investing to catch up.
For a long time, streams were accepted as loss leaders that brought fans closer to counties, and possibly led to new membership sales or attendance at matches.
A decent number of people have watched streams, and some counties are enjoying a spike in attendances at matches, such as Surrey, who saw an attendance of more than 4,700 for the first day of action against Leicestershire at the Oval on Friday, after they promoted their “work from Oval” scheme.
But that is not the picture across the board. Figures in the new edition of Wisden show that while Surrey welcomed more than 77,000 people to the Oval last summer, Northamptonshire had a total attendance of just 4,245 all season at Wantage Road.
But the streams are expensive to put on, so counties are exploring ways to recoup some of the cost. The England and Wales Cricket Board appears happy to allow them to experiment, as long as streams meet the minimum standards required in the County Partnership Agreement.
Exactly how sponsors would see the introduction of a paywall is unclear; they could be disappointed by the diminished reach, or they could appreciate the more direct access to the club’s members.
Despite paying down much of their debt thanks to the Hundred sale, Lancashire are forecasting a difficult year financially, because they are not hosting a Test match or a money-spinning concert.
The news comes at a curious time for the county, who have an infamously difficult relationship with their members. Adding to the disquiet, a cabal of former players, led by Lloyd and Allott, have accused the club’s board of forgetting they are a cricket club, and prioritising the business arm of Old Trafford, which includes two hotels and substantial conferencing and events facilities.
This resulted in a pair of awkward special general meetings last week. At the first, the club’s wording of resolutions saw the meetings embarrassingly adjourned, while at the second, brought by the agitators, 63 per cent of members voted against the board’s recommendation.
Lancashire have worked until this year with Badger and Coombes, a streaming company they announced a 10-year partnership with in 2025. The deal ended early in mysterious fashion ahead of this season, and Lancashire are now working with a different company to put on this year’s stream.
Lancashire’s stream has been one of a couple that Sky has seen as high-quality enough to use for broadcast on its channels in recent years.
Sky, meanwhile, is set to broadcast Surrey’s championship match against Essex at the Kia Oval from April 22-25.