Last night was the beginning of supposedly a shiny new era in Australian cricket with the first ever match in the new T20 Big Bash between the Sydney... oh I don't care.
And that is the point.
The first of the new T20 competition only got a paltry 12,287 people turning up. This I imagine would be very disappointing because being a Friday night in summer, you should be able to get far more than that.
The biggest problem as I see it isn't the format of the game but a horrid case of mismanagement of promotion.
Firstly rather than simply add two teams to the existing state sides to make 8 (I would have added NSW Country and Northern Victoria), they decided to tear down everything and rejink the colours so that they have zero connection which what went on before.
Cricket in Australia has been played between the states since 1892. That's 119 years of tradition simply just dumped into the bin. And seriously, in Sydney who in blinkies is going to want to support a team that plays in pink? PINK?!
The second major problem is that the new T20 competition is exclusive to Foxtel. When the late Sir Kerry Packer basically re-invented and reinvigorated cricket with his World Series Cricket in 1977 and again when the ACB relented in 1979-80, he had a ready audience on Channel 9.
The point is that cricket on free-to-air telly had an audience of several million, whereas the new T20 competition is only available to Foxtel subscribers and even then only to people to have further subscribed to the sport package. Casual cricket fans and people who aren't really cricket fans but might have watched it anyway, will now not see any of the T20 matches at all.
Kerry O'Keefe on ABC's Grandstand made the comment that in Sydney on a Friday night, everyone is probably out drinking and at pubs and clubs. Okay, so those people will probably already be at pubs and clubs and wouldn't have turned up anyway but most pubs and clubs do have Foxtel so they'll no reason to then go to the cricket, so the question is who is the intended audience of the new competition?
If cricket is on Foxtel then the rights are owned by News Ltd; that gives away the answer away. The rights can then be onsold to World Sport Group, Astro and the SuperSport channels throughout India, Malaysia and the rest of South East Asia, and into the Arabic nations (maybe even China?).
The T20 Big Bash seems to be a vehicle merely to sell TV rights to other countries and leave Australians largely ignored. That's fine I suppose but it does suggest the reason why I was watching free-to-air ABC1 and Midsomer Murders.
Even if the people who sell TV rights are able to extract just 50 cents from every person in India, that would still be half a billion dollars which would easily satisfy most broadcasters need for profits.
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