Mr McLennan is also bidding for all of Cricket Australia's media rights after lobbing an audacious bid to prise them away from rights holder Nine, which was also the broadcaster for the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games.
Ten mounted a final bid at the end of last week, but reports of a $500 million cash offer are understood to be off the mark, with a complex deal including contra advertising on the table.
Mr McLennan's aggressive bidding strategy is a genuine attempt to win all broadcast cricket rights in a move that echoes Kerry Packer when he owned Nine and applied the win-win tactic. Sealing all the rights would be a big loss leader for Ten, but they would help generate forward momentum on Ten's programming platform and attract new advertisers to the network, which it could bundle into advertising packages across its programming assets.
If Mr McLennan does not capture all the rights, he will force Nine to pay a high premium and give Ten an advantage when it competes with Nine for other content rights in the free-to-air market. Nine pays about $45m a year under the current seven-year deal, but could be pushed to fork out $80m a year.
Reports have confidently speculated that Ten is on the hook for all the rights; however, in one scenario Cricket Australia may allow Nine to retain the rights to internationals and Twenty20 matches.
Ten could walk away with one-day internationals and the Big Bash League, which was with Fox Sports for two seasons until last summer.
Ten is a big believer in the potential of the Big Bash, which it believes can emulate the tribalism seen in the massively successfully Indian Premier League if it were to move to a free-to-air network from a pay-TV platform.
Mr McLennan's Packer moment followed Cricket Australia launching legal action against Nine to clarify whether the Big Bash is part of Nine's exclusive last rights clause that allows the network to see other bids and match them. Nine does not want the Big Bash rights in a new deal.
In a further twist, it is understood Nine is harbouring doubts about whether to match Ten's $500m bid for all forms of cricket as it contemplates walking away from the fierce bidding war.
Nine executives are believed to be prepared to wait out the bidding timetable and use all of the next three weeks before deciding whether to exercise their last rights as Australian television executives prepare to fly to Los Angeles for the annual screenings with the big studios.
The Australian.