Family friendly prices for World Cup

Cricket World Cup chief executive John Harnden is confident the six-week ICC event can sustain interest and keep the football codes off the back pages.

The local organising committee of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 to be staged in Australia and New Zealand announced their ticket-pricing scheme on Wednesday, with families the big winners.

For all pool matches, $5 kids tickets will be available and for most of the preliminary fixtures adult prices start from $20.

Even for the final to be staged at the MCG, children will gain entry from $60.

In the majority of cases, families will be able to attend pool matches for less than $150.

Harnden denied the length of the tournament and the quality of some of the teams made the World Cup a tough sell, but said it was important families were kept in mind.

“The reality is it takes that long to field the pool section and then over finals the travel across two countires and logistics dictates that’s where it ends up,” Harnden said in Sydney on Wednesday.

“Also it’s about building momentum for a tournament.

“There’s plenty to go around for everybody and for us. The point when the footy codes start is at pointy end of the tournament where we would expect interest to be at its peak.

“We believe we’ve got a world class product one of the biggest in the world and people will come along.

“We’ve done extensive research for our pricing and this is what we think the right pricings are.

“This is about making certain everyone comes along and is part of the world cup.

“Common sense (is a big part of it) – that’s what we’ve done.

“A lot of the research supports there’s enormous support for people wanting to be part of the cricket World Cup.”