The broadcaster has a five-year deal worth $500 million with Cricket Australia which expires next year.

Negotiations for 2018-2023 are underway.

But UBS believes the broadcaster should consider walking away.

“The existing cricket deal costs Nine circa $100 million per annum,” UBS media analyst Eric Choi wrote in note to clients. “We estimate the existing deal likely only generates gross revenues of $60-$70 million.

“We think it would seem logical for Nine to enter negotiations with the following mindset: i) more cricket content at no additional cost, or ii) to step away from the cricket contract.”

Option two would need Network Ten to hand over rights to the Big Bash League (BBL) to nine.

Channel Ten bought the BBL rights in 2013 for $20 million a year which expires in 2018.

“Any future deal that we do, we want everything,” Nine’s director of sport Tom Malone said in November. “We want Test matches, we want one-dayers, we want (international) Twenty20s and we want the Big Bash.”

CA is confident it’ll find a buyer.

“We are not concerned that there will be a lack of interest for our media rights,” the body’s broadcasting manager Ben Amarfio told Fairfax Media. 

“Live sport, and cricket in particular, continues to be a premium asset.”