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In 2011 cricket in Australia changed.
Well, cricket itself didn’t change, but the image of cricket changed. And image matters.
Image really, really matters.
FOLLOW LIVE CRICKET SCORES OF DAY THREE BETWEEN AUSTRALIA AND INDIA
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Cricket’s predominant image in popular culture is of slow, meandering summer days. Of cream cable-knit sweaters. Of old people. Of rural villages and of afternoon tea. Of defensive play, genteel behaviour, sweaty jock-straps and old, stuffy pavilions.
In popular western culture cricket has an image problem. Cricket is not cool.
Cricket is not cool not because of what it is, but because of what people think it is.
In this age what something looks like matters more than what it is. Not because what it is doesn’t matter. What it is is important. But what it is is rarely seen, if what it looks like doesn’t appeal.
“To reach kids we need cricket that doesn’t look like the cricket they know.”
– Cricket Australia’s Mike McKenna, February 2011.
Doesn’t look like.
Cricket Australia were sharp. They recognised that in the age of domestic T20, international cricket, without effective administration and redistribution of wealth, was an increasingly unstable and risky investment.
Cricket Australia saw the past before it ended and felt the future before it arrived.
***
In April 2011, the KFC Big Bash, Australia’s six-year-old domestic Twenty20 competition made up of the six traditional state teams was scrapped by Cricket Australia and replaced by the KFC Big Bash League: an eight team, city-based competition.
The new Big Bash League was entirely owned by Cricket Australia and they designed the whole thing.
New teams. New home stadiums. New names. New colours. New logos. New kits. New websites. New Twitter handles. New hashtags.
The teams from two-team cities, Melbourne and Sydney were even given team profiles to distinguish themselves from one another. The Melbourne Renegades, playing at the Etihad Stadium, were meant to represent “modern Melbourne, vibrant, diverse and progressive,” boasting a “healthy streak of anti-establishment.” Their rivals meanwhile, the Stars, playing at the MCG, wished to embody the city’s more traditional side, and the same synthetic differences were applied to the Sydney teams also.
It was all so fake.
But cricket looked new, cricket looked different.
And suddenly it was all so real.
***
In 2005, Fox Sports signed a seven-year broadcasting deal for the old and original KFC Big Bash worth $12.5 million annually. After the 2011 revamp that deal still had two years remaining. The 2011 revamp cost Cricket Australia money. Money that they weren’t making up from a TV deal worth a sum well below the new and rising market value. The new competition was going to remain on subscription television for two more seasons and Cricket Australia were losing money.
In July 2013, as Australia crashed to a 347-run defeat against England at Lord’s to go two-zero down in the Ashes, the finger of blame was pointed at the BBL. The tournament had shredded the domestic calendar, ruined the Sheffield Shield, corrupted batsmen’s techniques, realigned player priorities.
Cricket Australia needed the revamp to work, financially and for PR.
And it did.
In the first season after the redesign, TV ratings were up 83.5% on the previous season. The 31 matches televised between December 1st 2011 and January 29th 2012 were comfortably the 31 highest rating shows on subscription television in Australia, and the Melbourne Stars’ match against the Sydney Thunder was the fourth highest watched programme in Australian pay television history.
In the second Big Bash League season, BBL matches were the most watched programmes, sports and non-sports, throughout December and January on subscription TV in Australia.
It was nothing more complicated than an aggressively marketed rebranding, but Big Bash League cricket looked cool, Big Bash League cricket was popular, and TV wanted it.
In spring 2013 when Foxtel’s seven year deal expired, free-to-air channel Network Ten signed a record-breaking $100 million broadcasting deal for the rights to the BBL for five years.
And then the Big Bash League went and got even bigger.
Boosted by being on free-to-air TV and Cricket Australia pouring money back into marketing the tournament, the third season of the BBL was even more successful than the first.
The average TV audience for a BBL match was almost one million. 42% of attendees came to their first BBL match, which was 14% more than in the previous season and one in five were coming to an elite cricket match for the first time. More women came. More kids watched. More families attended. More than one million Australians watched matches live.
The revolution was being televised and the revolution was spreading.
***
In their 2013 Annual Report, Cricket Australia projected that domestic rights would account for 65% of their broadcasting revenue in the cycle ending 2015/16.
“We don’t make a profit, but that’s a deliberate growth strategy. The Big Bash League is about bringing new audiences to the game and about reinvesting money to grassroots cricket. It’s not about making money.”
– Cricket Australia’s Mike McKenna, October 2014
It’s not about making money now. But because of the redesign, because of the revamp, cricket in Australia looks different, cricket in Australia looks cool. And cricket in Australia is ready for an uncertain international future.
Image matters. It really, really matters.
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