Very happy but not satisfied – that’s the feeling around Australian cricket following the third season of the Big Bash League.
The first season with free-to-air coverage on Network Ten has delivered outstanding audiences and that is beginning to translate into higher attendances.
However, the most important feature of the season is the number of families and kids evident at matches and we hope to have similar trends confirmed when TV audience data has been analysed.
The BBL provides cricket with an opportunity to underpin the future of the game in Australia and that is the ultimate objective.
We want cricket to be Australia’s favourite sport and to do that we need to inspire each new generation of Australians to become fans and players of the game.
Research provided evidence that cricket was not as much a part of the lifestyle of boys and girls under 15 years of age as it had been in past generations.
Both the social and demographic changes in our society meant that cricket needed to do something different to better engage with young people, females and Australians of all of our nation’s diverse cultural backgrounds. We needed to find a new way to get them into the game and the BBL is playing an important role in doing just that.
It has been an ideal way of introducing new fans to cricket, with the aim, over time, to help graduate their interest into other forms of game.
In building these interest levels and following of cricket more broadly, we will preserve our much-loved traditions like Test cricket, not ruin them.
We want to ensure there is as much interest and passion for an Ashes series in 20 years’ time as we saw this year, but to do that we couldn’t just keep doing what we had for the past 20 years.
Our research showed that sitting back and simply assuming that the next generation of Test fans would come was fraught with danger.
We have seen other sports rest on their laurels and support fall away as people were drawn to other sports and entertainment options. Cricket was heading down that path and we couldn’t let that happen to our game.
In BBL|01, 10 percent of fans attending matches were paying to watch cricket for the very first time.
That increased to 13 percent in BBL|02. We are anticipating a similar outcome when research is in for BBL|03. It demonstrates that one of our primary objectives, drawing new audiences to the game, is succeeding.
When the plans for the League were developed we were unapologetic in designing it to appeal to kids and their families.
It needed to be a form of entertainment that was great value for money and an event experience that enhanced the cricket being played. We wanted families to come back again and again.
Hence the music, fireworks, dancers and acrobats that support the boundaries, wickets and fielding. We appreciate these elements may not be every cricket lover’s cup of tea, and that’s fine, but BBL was never built to simply maintain the status quo.
The measurable statistics tell us that the model is working, that kids and families are attending, watching the broadcast and having a great time.
This season more than 650,000 fans attended BBL matches at an average of 19,000 per match. That compares well with ballpark figures for the NRL (15,000), Super Rugby (20,000) and the A-League (14,000).
The BBL saw six matches with crowds that exceeded 25,000 and a high of nearly 43,000 attending the Melbourne derby at Etihad Stadium.
The broadcasts were watched by a cumulative audience of just under 10 million Australians, at an average of 932,000 metro and regional free-to-air viewers, compared to AFL (821,000), NRL (953,000), and A-League (155,000).
The Big Final was watched by an average of 1.5 million viewers and nearly 40 percent of matches saw the national TV audience exceed one million.
Acknowledging that the BBL season is much shorter than other codes, these numbers nonetheless demonstrate that the league has become a serious player in the Australian sports landscape and clearly successful in the minds of its target audience.
Raising the profile of Australian cricket’s next generation of players is another objective.
The exposure of players such as James Muirhead, Nic Maddinson, Gurinder Sandhu, Aaron Finch, Ben Dunk, Josh Hazlewood and many others, has provided kids with new heroes and players with new opportunities.
Players themselves have contributed more than just their on-field skills to the success of the league. Their engagement with fans before, during and after the game, the agreement to be mic’d up and support of the promotion of the league indicate their awareness of the importance of the BBL in cricket’s future success.
Network Ten have brought a new voice to the broadcast of cricket. Their production of the game and the insights of the commentary team have been well received within cricket and media circles and ratings prove our fans enjoyed it too.
On radio Fairfax Radio Network backed up their Test coverage with ball by ball commentary of the BBL and have added tremendous value to the coverage of the competition.
The league was also supported by ABC Radio, which covered the final of the competition, and Southern Cross Austereo, which provided entertaining updates throughout the season.
We appreciate that although fans have started voting with their feet and TV remotes, the BBL continues to have its critics, although there appears to be fewer of them and they are less vocal.
The game has a specific audience in mind and like any targeted approach, there is the potential that some will not choose to ‘buy in’ to that offering. We are comfortable with that and believe we have a range of formats to appeal to Australia’s wide-range of cricket followers, from Test and Sheffield Shield, through to ODIs and the BBL.
Of course, there is room for fans to love all formats.
Management at the Australian Cricketers’ Association has made it known that it would like the BBL moved to an October timeslot.
While CA understands the suggested rationale, our commitment to ensuring the BBL remains accessible to fans is paramount. We believe the December-January period, when much of the population is on holidays, is the time to do that.
Our players understand this approach. The cricket fixture is dependent on a number of factors, many outside the control of CA, including when other countries agree to tour Australia. We have a tight season, due to weather impacts and ground availability.
We do our best to ensure a coherent program but inevitably there are conflicts among priorities and compromises that must be made.
CA has re-invested, back into the BBL, most of the broadcast rights fee received in the recent deal. We do expect that most teams will run a profit on their operations this year and this money will be reinvested in those teams or in the other cricket activities managed by their owners, the State Cricket Associations.
The BBL is an investment in the future of cricket, not the cash cow some commentators suggest.
We are convinced that there is plenty of growth potential in the League and will be raising our expectations as planning begins for BBL|04.
Now that we are able to engage with the entire country via Network Ten we anticipate that our broadcast audiences and attendances will continue to grow in the seasons ahead.
We are very happy with this year’s results, but we’ll only be satisfied when the BBL is firmly established, contributing to the growth in cricket participation and following right across the country and ensuring it is Australia’s favourite sport and a sport for all Australians.
In this exclusive column, Big Bash League project owner Mike McKenna continues the discussion with Roarers about the Big Bash League.
ItzArka
Guest
the CA should run the BBL throughout the summer during the weekends only. then it would fetch more corwd and viewers per game. and the BBL teams should be scheduled to play few test matches with each other during the weekdays. and one test win should carry double the points they earn in a BBL T20 win. and that point should be added to the BBL league table as bonus points. then the t20 will become more popular as well as the domestic tests will get the importance too. and international matches will run parallel just as it do currently...
ItzArka
Guest
firstly that timing was a bad one. actually there were too many matches held in january in melbourne this summer. the australian open matches, the aus-eng odi, the two a-league teams' home matches, the two big bash teams' home matches, and just two days before the big bash semi final, the eng-aus t20 happened there. so tell me how much would melbourne people pay in one month to watch that many games?? plus the timing was on a weekday. that was the mistake. if that was played on friday or saturday, i can assure you it would fetch more than 40,000 spectators. and yeah, if WACA had a seating capacity of 50,000, you would get to see there 50,000 spectators too in the scorchers home games...
ItzArka
Guest
well said. but i don't think they were there for the pop music and beer glasses. what i watched on TV was that there were many kids out there in the stadiums and supported their home team passionately. they were most passionate in the melbourne derby at docklands. and i felt that there were more renegades fans than stars fans. and i find the renegades as a more appealing brand than the stars...
sheek
Roar Guru
x
sheek
Roar Guru
You know, they reckon back in the early 1800s people played a game called football, whereby only the feet could be used to propel the ball. Then in about 1823 some guy had the bright idea to pick the ball up & run with it, thus apparently creating another game entirely. And then someone else came up with the idea of passing the ball through the hands. Heavens forbid! For the next 40-70 years arguments raged as to which type of football was legitimate, even those where the hands were used to carry the ball. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, about half a dozen variations or so of football were in existence - association football (soccer), rugby union, rugby league (in England), American football, Canadian football, Australian football & gaelic football. All adopted elements that had existed at various times in the 1800s - some kept the offside rule, others abandoned it; some allowed forward passes & knock-ons, others abandoned them; touch-downs & tries were variations of the same thing; held/down & tackled/play the ball were also variations of the same thing; some kept the round ball & others adopted the oval ball; and so on. I wonder if cricket will go the same way..... Will anyone care..... I don't know if there's a historical comparison of what is happening today. How long does a sport remain basically the same? 100 years? 200 years? Perhaps it will end like the Olympics with the ancient Greeks. Professionalism, greed, money, gambling & corruption will see most sports suspended for about a million years before some reincarnation of Pierre de Courbertin comes along along to revive an old idea. Sport will be replaced by war, replaced by sport, replaced by war. History repeats.....
Ash
Guest
Don't worry about the BBL JAJI people like you were asking the same question about T20 even a decade ago. & now its more popular than ever before after 10 years. similarly it will be even bigger after 5 years from now. Cheers
art pagonis
Guest
Great , Great article Mike....we will soon be playing 8 Franchise League Cricket in T20, 40 overs and 2 X 80 over games in Domestic Cricket with Bupa, Ryiobi and KFC and many other sponsors on board. So each Franchise will play about 14 series plus playoffs and grand finals Fairfax Radio and the ABC and Nine and Ten will network with one another for advertising. cricket in the world will head for a similar Interntional programme. Each of 8 nations will play home and away series of 1 Test, 2 x 50 over games, 3 T20 games. The season will be spread over 1 year. We will crown a World Champion in each of the 3 forms. It will have international Radio and TV coverage. Playoffs and Grand Finals as well. World Test Titles, World 50 over titles and World T20 titles every 4 years in a staggered fashion.
JAJI
Guest
Ah Gooner - the epitome of the Euro Snob - let me guess ties to the UK watches the EPL without fail every game lives and enjoys all the resources this country has to offer but wants to sit here and trash the local football product Well Gooner - I have been to 4 World Cups European Champions League finals FA Cups and matches in the EPL, Serie A and La Liga over 20 years.....and I love the A League because its our football competition Should we mention the fact there is no player from the EPL in the Worlds Top 10 at present and thus its a rubbish comp? Of course not Cricket has and always will be Australia's national game. The A League is doing just fine re playing standard, crowds, tv ratings etc. Do you think 10 years ago the NSL was even being mentioned anywhere in Summer? No of course not. Yet our crowds are almost on par with the NRL which frankly is amazing Lets see how the Big Bash goes after its been on Free to Air for 5 years....
ChrisB
Guest
1-how do you know that so many were there for the "novelties" ? Did you ask them all? Conduct a poll or something? 1- how many supermodels have you shagged?
ChrisB
Guest
Can you let me know next year which game your getting kids into for free? I've had to pay for all the games I took mine too, except the T20 international
Ash
Guest
Kids only had free entry to the 2 T20I’s at the MCG & ANZ…. Nothing to do with the BBL as for "lost momentum" of the finals... The 2 semis peaked at 1.54 & 1.53 million viewers respectively while the final peaked at nearly 2 million viewers !!!
Ash
Guest
Kids only had free entry to the 2 T20I's at the MCG & ANZ.... Nothing to do with the BBL
Ash
Guest
They might be closer in terms of crowds but BBL will still be miles ahead in Tv Ratings.
Ash
Guest
Everyone seems to give the same excuse of... oh the BBL is on 10 but A-league is only on SBS But I've never seen anyone before analyse the reason why the BBL is on 10 while A-league is on SBS.... So when you look at the tv ratings comparison of both comps last season when they were on the exact same platform of Fox Sports.... you know exactly why the BBL was picked up by a major commercial network & why the A-league is stuck on SBS When both were on the same Pay Tv platform, the BBL averaged 235k while the HAL averaged 75k.
Gooner
Guest
Whys that simmo? Because it burns my eyes to watch the a league? Because when I watch soccer I want to see more than 3 passes strung together? Please enlighten me as to how I can become a true diehard?
Sportnut
Guest
My bad. I thought they were free at BBL games.
Gooner
Guest
Difference being that the big bash is of a fairly decent, if not better, standard when compared to other t20 competitions. The a league on the other hand is best described as just above the skill level of your average under 12 club teams. Until the standard of the a league rises considerably, it will continue to be only for the die hard supporters.
Simmo
Guest
You're not that "diehard" champ.
onside
Guest
Easy mate. The written word can be interpreted every which way. What I mean by instant gratification is simply this, the supporters come away happy. Win some, lose some, sure, but the game is always very entertaining as opposed to other forms of the game that are occasionally entertaining ,and even then in pockets. I sense you think I am having a crack. I'm not. I am only saying what I think. And its all positive.. Sure the crowds are enthusiastically parochial. That said, if an opposition batsmen gets onto a few, then everybody appreciates the effort. For example in one semi final a batsmen (cant remember) hit Brett Lee for six a couple of times, straight back over his head ,when Lee was bowling flat chat. It was awesome stuff. Brett Lee supporters ,whilst on the one hand dismayed at the sixes, were on the other hand amazed they saw a batsmen achieve such a thing. That's what I mean by win /win . I don't doubt that supporters know the rules. Sure they do. What I contend is that all supporters will remember those mighty sixes off Brett Lees bowling ,long after the result of the game has been forgotten. Your opening remark questions my position on is about peoples ability to likeT20 Test cricket . This came about in response to Mike McKenna's article saying something along the lines of, that CA hope young people will be attracted to mainstream cricket through the medium of T20. I personally do not think that will happen, which is an entirely different matter to seasoned cricket followers also being attracted to T20. One-eyed Jack, I seem to have touched a nerve, and mate, that was never my intention. That you felt the need to response in such a manner is unfortunate. I reckon if we were both discussing this over a beer there would be little if anything about T20 in particular, or cricket in general , we would disagree on. Untl then.......
Gooner
Guest
Er it wasn't free for kids. The waca sold out in 20 minutes for the final. Not sure if this constitutes a slow down.