Twenty20 cricket has been the undisputed leader of short format sports for more than a decade.
Cricket has a long history of reducing matches to suit the market.
Once upon a time there were timeless Tests which then were reduced to a maximum of five days and then along came One Day cricket, super eights and variations of different ‘over’ formats.
Twenty20 struck a chord and other sports have tried to cash in on that success.
But, as we discovered on Episode 3 of the Roar podcast, cricket isn’t the only sport to have deep origins in shortening itself.
The original rules of rugby stated matches would be drawn after five days!
Rugby Sevens is also booming with the Olympics helping to cement the sport as its own product outside the 15s game.
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In this episode we speak with Sevens High Performance Manager and former Wallaby, Scott Bowen about the success of the Sevens and how it complements traditional rugby.
We’ll also look at the horror stories of sport changing for the sake of it and whether the market is big enough in the Australian context for all these short-form sports.