Big Bash misses with crowds, but TV ratings a hit
Columnist By Luke Doherty, 19 Dec 2011 Luke Doherty is a Roar Expert
- Tagged:
- Australian Cricket, BBL, Big Bash League, Cricket
As far as opening weekends go it was hit and miss for the shiny new Big Bash League. Armchair sports fans were more than happy to give the new competition a go, but dragging the target demographic through the gates proved a little harder.
We were told a crowd of 30,000 at the SCG on Friday night would prove the BBL would be the soundtrack to the summer, but only 12,285 showed up.
On Saturday night, the MCG was meant to be rocking with 50,000 T20 fanatics to see Shane Warne attempt to put Dave Warner in a spin. They got 23,496.
Ticket prices weren’t at the Beckhamesque levels of other recent high-profile matches.
You could get an adult ticket for as low as $20, and a child could walk through the turnstile for as little as $5 at either ground.
Awareness also couldn’t have been an issue. The T20 marketing campaign had been in overdrive all week. Besides, how could you miss a Godzilla-sized Warne trampling his way through the streets of Melbourne?
It seems Fox Sports was the real winner.
According to Cricket Australia, the Thunder’s match against the Stars on Saturday night was the fourth-biggest subscription television audience in Australian history.
So, how do you measure success after the first four-games?
CA officials were last night very keen for all and sundry to know just how well the contests were rating, while pointing to the fact that bigger crowds will be in the stands over the festive period.
When details of the competition were first announced in February this year I wrote about fans’ reactions to manufactured tribalism.
Would a game between two teams you’ve previously had no affiliation with make you spend your hard-earned? The general reaction was no.
As far as the structure goes, Cricket Australia have done a fantastic job.
Having two teams in Sydney and Melbourne and one in each of the other states right away is something Football Federation Australia officials would no doubt be envious of. Tickets are cheap and most sides have a big name or two to create interest in their market.
The competition will continue to rate well because Twenty20 cricket is a fantastic bite-sized viewing package for the sport fan and the casual watcher.
It will also no doubt add plenty of value to CA’s next rights deal, but does it excite you enough to put the family in the car and head out to the ground? And is that the true measure of success?
Recommend this story.
You can follow Luke Doherty on Twitter @Luke_Doherty and on Sky News Australia.
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- Explore:
- Australian Cricket, BBL, Big Bash League, Cricket
December 19th 2011 @ 8:02am
Fake ex-AFL fan said | December 19th 2011 @ 8:02am | Report comment
I thought the crowds at Perth and Adelaide seemed ok. And if 23k in Melbourne and 12k in Sydney is a failure, someone better tell the A league and NRL administrators.
December 19th 2011 @ 8:30am
Brett McKay said | December 19th 2011 @ 8:30am | Report comment
I’d agree with the Adelaide and Perth Crowds, Fakex, the WACA easily looked like it was three-quarters or more full. 15K+ crowds for both games last night wouldn’t surprise me at all..
December 19th 2011 @ 8:38am
Red Kev said | December 19th 2011 @ 8:38am | Report comment
I think they’d get bigger cricket crowds if they left grassy hills in place. When I lived in Perth I went to as many games as I could and always sat on the grass (of course I also lived walking distance from the WACA). I don’t know that I could stand having to sit in a seat at the SCG now I live in NSW.
December 19th 2011 @ 9:42am
Matt F said | December 19th 2011 @ 9:42am | Report comment
Yeah there’s nothing better then sitting on the hill on a nice afternoon. It’s what makes the Blues’ annual North Sydney Oval game so good to watch.
December 19th 2011 @ 2:10pm
Renegade said | December 19th 2011 @ 2:10pm | Report comment
11’000 at Adelaide and 13’000 at the WACA yesterday….23 in Melbourne and 12 in Sydney.
Here are the comparisons for the first game at each venue last year.
WACA – Capacity
MCG – 29’500
Adelaide – 18’000
Sydney – 15’000
There’s a visible decrease in attendance….hopefully they grow as the tournament goes on.
December 19th 2011 @ 8:28am
Steve said | December 19th 2011 @ 8:28am | Report comment
That’s what I was thinking, first week was a great success and crowds will only grow.
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December 19th 2011 @ 11:20pm
dlang30 said | December 19th 2011 @ 11:20pm | Report comment
The crowds can certainly grow if CA choose the right paths and give the fans teams that they can be ‘passionate’ about to support. Obviously people are interested, but I hope for the good of the game it’s not just a temporary rush of blood with Warnies comeback the main motivator and that people really give the BBL of 2011-12 a proper chance.
December 19th 2011 @ 8:37am
Rellum said | December 19th 2011 @ 8:37am | Report comment
Well if the A-League is any guide the first game crowds are usually the biggest until the final rounds and finals.
December 19th 2011 @ 8:56am
mds1970 said | December 19th 2011 @ 8:56am | Report comment
The TV ratings paint an interesting picture, and a more positive one than the attendances.
Watching a game on TV indicates an interest, attending live indicates a passion. It would appear the new competition has attracted interest; but the new teams haven’t yet attracted passionate support. That fans are taking a wait and see approach before investing their money and attendance time.
December 19th 2011 @ 12:45pm
Renegade said | December 19th 2011 @ 12:45pm | Report comment
Spot on.
December 19th 2011 @ 9:14am
Tony said | December 19th 2011 @ 9:14am | Report comment
I guess it does not matter that the crowds were poor at Bellerive and the Gabba for the NZ Tests, since plenty watched on telly.
December 19th 2011 @ 9:30am
Chris said | December 19th 2011 @ 9:30am | Report comment
I actually thought most of the crowds were pretty fair. Not fantastic, but about where realistically they should be for a brand new comeptition with teams that have no history.
It will be interesting to see how the Thunder and Renegades crowds compare to the Sixers and Stars.
December 19th 2011 @ 9:34am
sheek said | December 19th 2011 @ 9:34am | Report comment
Luke,
I’m going to give CA some credit here, but very guardedly.
Perhaps they came up with 8 entirely new franchises, monikers & colour schemes in order to protect the integrity of their state icons, just in case the BBL falls over. Otherwise, I simply can’t think why they’ve gone down this absurd marketing path, it’s unsustainable .
If the BBL really takes off, what then? Will CA revert to the traditional brands with the addition of a second team in each of Sydney & Melbourne? Surely the current set-up must be temporary???
December 19th 2011 @ 9:40am
Matt F said | December 19th 2011 @ 9:40am | Report comment
I’m pretty sure that they did it because they are looking to add more teams into the tournament in the long run and it’s very difficult to put a 2nd team in NSW when the first team is called NSW for example. Break it into cities and you can expand quite easily.
December 19th 2011 @ 10:17am
The Cattery said | December 19th 2011 @ 10:17am | Report comment
Matt F
spont on observation.
As soon as you start breaking Fox ratings records, you have to start thinking, ok, how do we deliver more games? We do that with extra teams.
Considering that the Canberra Comets were in the one-day series for a couple of seasons, they are an obvious choice as the next cab off the rank.
For a 10th club, you are looking where good infrastructure already exists waiting to be used during Summer – natural choices are either Gold Coat or Geelong – CA can get to 10 teams without even thinking about it too hard.
December 19th 2011 @ 10:21am
Whites said | December 19th 2011 @ 10:21am | Report comment
There’s also teams from New Zealand.
December 19th 2011 @ 10:54am
Matt F said | December 19th 2011 @ 10:54am | Report comment
Yeah there are plenty of places to expand. Like you said, Canberra is an obvious canddiate. Places like Geelong and Gold Coast would be options. Newcastle would be an option, assuming they have a suitable ground. I know NSW have played the occasional Shield/Ryobi game at Newcastle but I don’t think that ground has the capacity for T20 and Ausgrid is probably the wrong shape. Another WA team is also possible. It would look really stupid if you had Geelong playing Victoria or Gold Coast playing QLD. The new teams were decided with long-term expansion plans in mind.
NZ could also be an option, though NZ may prefer to have their own T20 competition.
December 19th 2011 @ 12:57pm
Whites said | December 19th 2011 @ 12:57pm | Report comment
Newcastle only has No1 Sportsground for cricket. It would need a major redevelopment to host a T20 team. It has one small stand and is surrounded by grass hills. It has a nominal capacity of aout 20,000. Although, there is always Nathan Tinkler to help out.
December 19th 2011 @ 1:09pm
Matt F said | December 19th 2011 @ 1:09pm | Report comment
That’s the ground I was thinking of. Thanks for the info. 20k isn’t actually that bad. It’s probably enough capacity really but they’d want more stands and less hill. There would be other issues like corporate and media facilities which would be a big issue. Certainly Newcastle would be a long way off.
December 19th 2011 @ 12:58pm
Brett McKay said | December 19th 2011 @ 12:58pm | Report comment
Catters, Canberra and a second Qld team (Gold Coast or north) are the rumours I’ve heard for some time regarding teams 9 and 10, and possibly as soon as BBL3. The issue for Canberra will be lights at Manuka, and it’s a classic catch-22: CA won’t move until there’s lights, and the ACT Govt won’t move until there’s a side guaranteed.
NZ won’t really be an option in the short term as they have their own aspirations for their own comp, which may be scheduled at a time that doesn’t conflict with the BBL, so that players going back and forth can occur. Which seems right to me, NZ have every right to establish their own comp as much as Australia does..
December 19th 2011 @ 1:25pm
The Cattery said | December 19th 2011 @ 1:25pm | Report comment
Brett
all good points, and that’s certainly true about NZ cricket having a right to develop their own comp- we all sometimes get in the habit here of treating it as an Australian outpost (much to the chagrin of Republican).
I know the ACT Government’s budget is ultra tight at the moment, and there is plenty of annoyance about the whole GWS thing ($20 mill over a 10 year period or whatever it was), so it’s a delicate situation, not to mention that Bruce probably needs renovating sooner rather than later.
With 40 AFL games guaranteed over the next decade (incl pre-season games), and the (near) promise of a T20 team, which would be huge for Canberra Summer sport, one would hope that the lights aren’t too far away.
A Canberra T20 team would easily top crowds of 10k on a regular basis, so they are an obvious choice for the 9th team – once that is made public, the ACT Government should act. Perhaps the AFL can throw a mill or two towards that project?
December 19th 2011 @ 2:56pm
Michael DiFabrizio said | December 19th 2011 @ 2:56pm | Report comment
Brett and Cattery, Geelong had a really good bid for Season 1 from all reports. Only missed out because CA preferred having two Melbourne teams. With lights coming to Simonds Stadium in the not to distant future, surely they are the logical choice?
The other thing that works in their favour is there isn’t any competition over summer in the form of the A-League or NBL (who do well in NQ, and the Gold Coast have both). Same goes for Canberra (and Hobart, for that matter). There’s a slight obsession in Aussie sport at the moment to follow what other sports are doing, but to me it might be wiser to try and find the old “gap in the market” and work from there.
December 20th 2011 @ 12:25pm
adam214 said | December 20th 2011 @ 12:25pm | Report comment
It’s simple its a new thing that people hadn’t seen before (well in this form anyway) there was warnie back on the tube for something other than his sexual exploits. Alot of people wanted to give it a go watching it on the couch to see if it was decent and worth the effort to go to a game and in my opinion it was decent cricket and for the first week not too shabby crowds.
It was a bit odd and slightly insulting to see a victorian team wear SA’s colours and shaun tait playing for them. But i like the strikers gear different colours than usual and a bit grating to not wear traditional colours but they’ll grow on me i’m sure.
Hell its not too bad we can beat the vics double the amount of times we could before.
December 23rd 2011 @ 7:41pm
Michael DiFabrizio said | December 23rd 2011 @ 7:41pm | Report comment
Fair call adam, a lot of it can be attributed to hype and Warnie. Worth noting though that ratings have remained solid since the first round of games (ie, after the hype has died down somewhat) – http://www.michaeldifabrizio.com/big-bash-league-tv-ratings
December 19th 2011 @ 2:24pm
sheek said | December 19th 2011 @ 2:24pm | Report comment
Matt F,
Actually, you can create other provinces out of a mother province. The old Transvaal split into Northern, Western & Eastern as well as Transvaal itself. The old Cape Province split into Western Province & Eastern Province.
In addition to Auckland, you have North Auckland, North Harbour & Counties-Manakau. In addition to Canterbury, you have Mid-Canterbury & South Canterbury.
Naming new provinces is a good exercise in creativity. A Western Sydney team could be called Western NSW or perhaps better still, Cumberland. A Newcastle based team could be called Eastern Australia. A Gold Coast team could be called Border, since it straddles the Qld-NSW borderline.
In rugby, Southern NSW Country has split from NSW & is now part of ACT. But they still refer to themselves as ACT-Southern Inland. They really are in need of a creative new provincial name. My suggestion is Monaro.
A good opportunity is presented here for sports fans to brush up on their Australian history & geography…..
December 19th 2011 @ 3:15pm
Fake ex-AFL fan said | December 19th 2011 @ 3:15pm | Report comment
On the subject of Australian history and geography Sheek, what the hell is a province? Worse yet a ‘Mother province’. We have things called ‘states’ and if you think people struggle to identify with the Melbourne Stars, just wait until you throw ‘Northern Victoria’ at them.
December 19th 2011 @ 3:40pm
sheek said | December 19th 2011 @ 3:40pm | Report comment
Faker,
Sorry about that. I realise you AFL types are behind the times!!! In rugby we call them provinces, since ACT-Southern Inland (incorporating Southern NSW) is neither a state nor territory but somewhere in between.
Furthermore, if we decided to partition Northern NSW into Eastern Australia, it would also be a province, bigger than a territory, but not quite a state.
Besides, it brings us in line with NZ & SA, who both have provinces.
December 19th 2011 @ 3:57pm
WoobliesFan said | December 19th 2011 @ 3:57pm | Report comment
I’m with Faker.
Suburb, city, state….that’s what we have in this country and that’s what we work with.
What’s next – county?
December 19th 2011 @ 4:09pm
Fake ex-AFL fan said | December 19th 2011 @ 4:09pm | Report comment
I must admit to being fascinated that Rugby Union has identified a previously unknown political entity within the Commonwealth of Australia not mentioned in the constitution, that is “somewhere in between” a state and a territory. Ground breaking stuff.
December 19th 2011 @ 8:51pm
stabpass said | December 19th 2011 @ 8:51pm | Report comment
I have heard our rugby teams desribed as provinces, and thought, am i missing something here, did i fall sleep during that history lesson.
Does not sound right to me for this country.
December 19th 2011 @ 9:38am
Matt F said | December 19th 2011 @ 9:38am | Report comment
It was more CA’s stupidly high expectations than anything else. The crowds aregenerally on par with what the state teams got last season so the new teams don’t seem to have turned anybody away yet. Why did they keep talking up 20k+ at the SCG and 50k at the MCG when ticket sales would have clearly shown that it was never going to happen? They’ve made themselves look very stupid because they exaggerated the attendance. If they’d said “we expect 15k at the SCG and 25k at the MCG” then, given last years BBL crowds, nobody would be saying anything.
December 19th 2011 @ 9:47am
Titus said | December 19th 2011 @ 9:47am | Report comment
If you look at the ratio of crowds to TV you will get an indication of genuine fans.
these are all estimates;
AFL 700 000 on TV 50 000 at games = 1-14
NRL 700 000 on TV 15 000 at games = 1-46
A-league 60 000 on TV 10 000 at games = 1 – 6
Big Bash 500 000 on TV 15 000 at games = 1-36
That gives you an indication of genuine, passionate fans, people who are willing to spend money on the games, buy Foxtel just to watch their sport etc
This is why the AFL does so well and it is why the a-league and Football has a value beyond its raw numbers.
December 19th 2011 @ 10:07am
AGO74 said | December 19th 2011 @ 10:07am | Report comment
For mine, I’d have thought 12 and 23k were good crowds. Perhaps CA dug their own hole with unrealistic crowd predictions last week.
Personally, I have no real interest in this comp but tuned in for a bit on saturday – only to see Warney on his return. I’d say a reasonable portion of the 400k were the same. Good number though.