The Big Bash League once was the summer’s biggest hit, but in light of the ball-tampering scandal and with Australian cricket in something of a performance crisis, BBL crowds and broadcast numbers are down in a blow to Australia’s summer of cricket.
This year’s BBL has been extended into a full home-and-away season for the first time in its history. Many hold the view that the BBL season is now too long. Here are a few proposals that could help the league become more relevant again.
More Australian star power
The public has become sick of Australian players not playing. When was the last time Mitch Starc and Steve Smith played in the BBL? The WBBL has the star Australian players playing all season, and although this can’t happen in the men’s tournament due to scheduling, a T20 game doesn’t take much out of a player, making a combined playing schedule doable, particularly at the end of each Test series.
The Australians should recognise they need to provide their services to the domestic game and play a couple of BBL matches per season. Retired plays could come back to play BBL, as we’re seeing with Shane Watson and Brad Hodge. In the first BBL season players like Brett Lee, Stuart McGill, Mathew Hayden and Shane Warne were all involved to increase the popularity of the league, and bringing back the retired guns of Aussie cricket could help the BBL return to a big sporting spectacle.
(AAP Image/Rob Blakers)
More internationals
More well-known internationals should be added to each squad to bring people through the gates. The WBBL has three to four internationals per squad, and the men’s game could do the same thing by increasing the number of stars in the BBL.
We’re currently without Kevin Pietersen, Andre Russell, Chris Gayle and other players of their ilk who give the league some star power. If the BBL sides were willing to pay a bit more to bring back the star internationals, they could help to bring back the superstars and increase the popularity of the BBL.
Return to having every game on free-to-air TV
Channel 7 and Fox Cricket have the broadcast rights until the end of the 2023-24 summer, but it remains underestimated what Network 10 did for the Big Bash League. They were the ones to believe in the BBL brought it to the Australian public on free-to-air TV.
Every BBL match was broadcast on live and free in the Network 10 era, but the current broadcast deal prevents this from happening. This means that fans switch off when their team is not playing. The Saturday night primetime match is behind the paywall, with regular Saturday double-headers prevented from reaching the whole of Australia.
Every match should be broadcast on free-to-air television. When the rights come back up for grabs, the BBL should look to give the Big Bash League back to Network 10 in an attempt to regain the Australian public viewership.
ODI clash
There are fewer one-day international clashes with the BBL this season thanks to the national team playing three ODIs in a single seven-day period, but when the one-dayers are played midway through the Big Bash season, star players are extracted from each side. This takes the star power away from the league and disrupts winning formulae and line-ups.
Shorter seasons with more teams
The season should remain confined to the school holiday period and not extend into February, but in exchange the league could expand to a ten-side tournament, with new teams in two of either Perth, Adelaide, Canberra, Gold Coast or Geelong.
If each team were to play each other once, plus one additional match against each club’s biggest rival – as was the case between BBL|02 and BBL|06 – each team would play ten matches, down from 14 in this year’s eight-side league.
Yes, Cricket Australia is unlikely to change what they’re doing, but these proposals could increase crowds to return the BBL to being the summer’s premier sporting league once again.
Base
Guest
More international stars and smaller season.
Duncan
Guest
Interesting point about the lack of international star power. There are no awesome players that I'm hanging out to see this year. After what they did to Chris Gayle his absence is clearly not due to money but due to being driven out of the country. Frankly, I think the marketing is a shambles. The emails I get from cricket Australia are half dedicated to WBBL which I don't care about. I can't figure out what the important match ups are. And quite a few games are only available on Fox. I think they have really damaged this competition through a combination of greed and political correctness.
max power
Guest
Bangladesh must be tough to beat
Basil
Guest
Simple. The product isn’t actually that good. Take it away from the holiday time slot so as to sit on its own merits and watch it perish.
Eden
Roar Rookie
Surely this has everything to do with going off the FTA deal with 10. I watched so much BBL last year even though I don’t like the format. It was just there and unavoidable if I channel surfed. Now it is out of sight out of mind. Ten out so much into BBL and made it what it is, or was, but they got shafted and the format will struggle. Foxtel are the only winners.
Targa
Guest
Combine it with the Super Smash and include the 6 NZ major associations. The grounds and crowds might be smaller in NZ, but the standard of players is higher at the moment. There could be 14 teams (8 Aussie, 6 Kiwi) in two groups of 7 (4 Aussie, 3 NZ) with the top 2 in each pool making the semifinals.
Working Class Rugger
Guest
Bring in more teams. Put a team on the GC and one in Canberra. If they want games in Geelong designate it as part of either the Renegades or Stars catchment. Play each team once. Boost domestic participation and double the allowable marquee players from 2 to 4. Then trial some rule changes. In England they're going to trial 5 ball overs. That might not be a bad tweak. But nothing too drastic. It certainly feels as though our current woes have had an impact. Getting used to the new broadcast schedule doesn't help but apparently ratings are actually up 5% from what I've read. Which is interesting.
anon
Roar Pro
I feel like T20 takes too long. There's no reason for such a long break between innings. Should be 5 minutes maximum. Punish teams harshly if they go even one second over their time allotted to bowl. Try to get it over with in under 3 hours. Cricket gets plenty of advertising shown in between overs, don't need a long innings break for bowlers who have bowled 24 deliveries.
Tony Tea
Guest
T10 already exists.
Hayden Cooper
Guest
I never underestimated what Ten did for the game at least from a broadcasting view. I truly appreciated what they did in having every match live on Ten or One, they really had everything right. I would often find myself thinking "how good is this". I was dreading the move to 7. Isn't it great when you know your team is about to play, get yourself ready to watch it on tv only to find some American reality show is on instead. Makes me want to vomit. ????
BA Sports
Roar Guru
Unlike the US and to a lesser degree Europe, culturally we are used to our sport being played on weekends. Use TV double headers (as someone suggested) if you like, but keep games to Friday-Sunday (maybe Thursday if you need it to fit everything in). I think many people find it hard to keep track of when games are on and when their team is playing. It just seems to be on every night and most households won't agree to having the same sport on in prime time on the household TV every single night
Wayne
Roar Guru
AFL already beat Cricket to that idea :P
Onside
Guest
Relaunch on ABC as Wiggles BB . Four teams : yellow, red, purple and blue.
Wayne
Roar Guru
Speaking honestly, I didn't watch the ODI's unless it was the Sunday game; otherwise I would watch the 2nd innings (whoever bats second) because I was at work. I'm guessing a lot of people fall in that bucket, so 7 didn't see the economics of showing Friday/Tuesday games where people would only watch half of it
Wayne
Roar Guru
T20 feels too long, will drop it down to T10 soon :P
Tony Tea
Guest
The novelty has worn off. Coming soon BBL-X.
Brett McKay
Expert
Lynton, I'm not sure Seven should just be "given" the BBL games that they had no interest in showing in the first place, just as they had no interest in the ODIs in this broadcast deal. The current broadcast deal doesn't prevent every BBL game being shown, Seven's lack of interest prevents it. CA tried to play hard ball with Ten, screwed them over, and this is the price they're paying...
Wayne
Roar Guru
You contradict yourself, you want more Star Power and yet more teams? The BBL is now competing against global competitions (Bangladesh has one on at the moment too); so there is only so many players to go around
The Regulator
Roar Rookie
In my opinion, the decline of the national team has had an impact on the interest on this domestic competition. At the worst time possible as well. The new TV rights deal signed with Seven & Foxtel has a 59-game schedule up 17 games from BBL06. Both channels will expect 59 games worth of content for the duration of the rights deal. However, I believe the Big Bash should be a 4-6 week gimmick tournament over the Xmas/New Year school holiday period, with somewhat exorbitant pay-days for international stars. This would mean more: a) more incentive for recently retired name Australian players to participate b) more incentive for name international players to make their way down under for an Australian summer cash-grab c) fewer games means points are more precious, making more games important. A shorter season also means its here for a good time, not a long time. Something that if viewers don't pay attention to, will be over before you know it.
peeeko
Roar Guru
Definitely agree on shorter seasons. too many grade cricketers who bowl finger spin get a run