The American company, which covered the 1996 Cricket World Cup in India and Pakistan, will offer live coverage of all 42 matches in the 1999 tournament to satellite and cable subscribers in the US. It also plans to offer coverage of W est IndiesM-^R matches in the tournament to free-to-air terrestrial broadcasters in the Caribbean plus coverage of the Super Six stage, the semi-finals and the final.
ECB Marketing Director Terry Blake said: ``We want to ensure that next summer's Cricket World Cup is a truly global event. This deal is good news for cricket fans in North America, Central America and the Caribbean and means that the cumulative worldwide TV audience for the event will be close to two billion.'' KBS President Michael Kelly said: ``Our coverage of the event will be greater than ever before and we expect the 1999 Cricket World Cup to be the most watched, broadly distributed World Cup ever.''
Sky Sports and the BBC will share TV coverage of the tournament in this country while similar alliances are agreed between free-to-air and pay services in Asia (including the Indian Sub-continent), Africa and Australia.
12 teams will take part in the tournament which starts on May 14 next year with a final at Lord's on June 20. They are: Australia, Bangladesh, England, Indi a, Kenya, New Zealand, Pakistan, Scotland, South Africa, Sri Lanka, West Indies and Zimbabwe.