Twenty20 is ECB’s new marketing flagship and it starts today June 13th. This 20 over competition surrounded by a plethora of razza-mattaz has been launched in a desperate attempt to woo that crucial marketing social segment 16-25s, male and female. Market Research confirmed what everyone knew namely that most cricket spectators were white, middle-class and middle aged. That finding spelt disaster according to Stuart Robertson formerly a Kwik Cricket man under the old NCA and now ECB Marketing Manager in ECB’s commercial Department.
This analysis is of course flawed since it refers to people watching what is known as first class county cricket . Were the same research to have included recreational cricket throughout the land and the million or so who regularly watch will include a great many brown and black people as well as many working class. However it will reinforce the age and sex bias.
Stuart Robertson considers it a disaster that most of those who do watch are middle aged and middle class but surely the real disaster is that such a small proportion of those middle aged and older cricket lovers and club players ever bother to watch County or even International Cricket.
There is indeed a further flaw in the subsequent logic based on these findings. It is the assumption that the so called youth sector is anything other than that. Those who fit the age profile today will be middle aged and older in a few decades and the average person’s taste’s change over time. No one spends a fortune on marketing fine wines and malt whisky to youngsters yet the market for these products grows year by year.
There is another misunderstanding with respect to the thinking which leads to Twenty20 and the emphasis on it. It is that cricket in itself does not possess values of it own which are worthy of extolling in its own name. The marketeers would probably describe this as niche marketing and it is worthy of serious consideration at a time when so much is being invested in Twenty20 and so much hoped for as a result.
The preponderance of mainstream sports marketing is all wam bang wallop and so much of it derivative of football /soccer and its genre. Cricket is not soccer and it is its inherent differences that appeal both to those who love both games as well those with a singular passion for cricket. However it requires much more subtlety and creativity from the marketeers to promote cricket as a distinct and wonderful sport than it does to ape contemporary football and pop music.
There is another curiosity in the Twenty20 spin. It is this. For centuries cricket matches or events have been staged and promoted with all the fun of the fair and huge crowds gathered as a result. From John Nyren’s Hambledon, the travelling circus that was All England through to the modern Cavaliers, Lord’s Taverners, Bunburys and Lashings.
It goes without saying that a well organised and promoted cricket event from small villages to large towns attract between 2000 to 10,000 especially if the weather is right. It is not a magic innovative formula but a well tried and tested one. This is re-enforced by the substantially better supported festival county weeks.
Another most important factor missing from the Twenty20 analysis is surely this?. In the past the popularity of cricket rested upon the fact that almost every child played the game, formally at school or club and informally to a changing variety of rules in garden, backyard, street, playground, park and beach. Likewise the spectator interest in Australia derives ultimately from everyone, boys and girls, having played the sport.
It is a risky strategy to suggest that the festival atmosphere of Twenty20 will lead to youngsters with no background in the game wanting to watch County Cricket ,OD or 4D variety, let alone a Test Match.
Missing from ECB’s Marketeers research is any done in Australia to discover why young men and women consider a day at a test match even the day after Christmas and New Year a good way to spend the day with the multitude of alternative leisure pursuits available to them.
Also missing is any research explaining why so few of 500,000 weekend cricketers ever bother to visit their nearest County ground, often for decades.
That said there is much to commend Twenty20 not least because it attempts to fill up the County Cricket Grounds with paying customers. County Cricket Grounds are in general shockingly underused to generate income and so become a burdensome capital asset draining the game of essential funds. If Twenty20 is successful just as itself it will bring much needed funds to the ailing County Cricket Clubs.
As ECB is dominated and controlled by the 18 first class counties it is perhaps not surprising that so little if any of ECB’s marketing budget is spent promoting the game in general, nationally at local level. Likewise so little thought is given to the anomaly of a few county clubs maintaining an oligopoly of ECB/Professional competitions.
This continues to deprive over half the country of top level cricket as well as exclude cricket loving billionaires and sports impresarios from entering the top strata with their own clubs.
It is indeed ironic that ECB should have been so pro-active in pushing through promotion and relegation in local league cricket including league mergers while it so carefully guards its flagship league and knock out competitions from any new entrants.
It should surely be the aim of a national governing body to spread the sport at the top level to all areas of the country. When it is already obvious that the sport flourishes at grass roots level in such areas, indeed much more so than in many major cities, it is odd that so little is done to consider an extension at top level competition beyond the 18 county clubs.
There are 10,000 cricket clubs in UK with perhaps 60 % affiliated to ECB,SCU etc.1500 or clubs enter national ECB youth club competitions(the U-15s being also a 20 over game). Over 1000 clubs enter the ECB Indoor 6-a-side national club competition and that’s in winter and some 500 odd enter the ECB National Club Championship knock out every summer.
It is perhaps too greater a leap of the imagination, let alone demand on time and resources, to create a 45 over national league involving 200 clubs plus the First Class County Clubs and so called’ Minor’ Counties on a divisional basis with promotion and relegation. Such a competition would move mountains as far as media and general public perception of the sport as well as attract a vast number of local sponsors and benefactors.
Which bring one back to Twenty20. All club cricketers have played 20 over cricket in evening leagues usually with the overs being of 8 balls. The further north one goes with the endlessly light summer evenings such evening 20 over leagues abound.
Perhaps when the initial excitement in the county committees and at ECB has died down it may be appreciated that here is a formula for a much wider competition involving hundreds of local clubs all with the potential of rising to the top layer. A continuous hubbub all over the land from Truro to Berwick, Carlisle to Ipswich . If so Twenty20 will truly achieve ECB’s stated objective of making cricket the whole country’s major summer spectator sport.
In the meantime one wishes Twenty20 great success. Indeed its success in UK has spread to most cricket countries and to Internationals and most recently to the first ever ICC World Cup Twenty20 in South Africa,the Stanford Island competition in the Caribbean and rival competitions in India.
It has also quickly established itself among the developing cricket countries as a valuable form of the game attracting new cricketers to the sport.
The continuing weird aspect of all this remains the apparent blind ignorance of so many running the professional international game who would appear unaware of what the clubor recreational game had known and practised for years-all day, afternoon and evening games, 50 plus, 40 and 20 over (often 15/16 eight ball overs).Likewise 11 and 12 a side, as well 6 a side, pairs and single wicket.
It is, of course, the UK fashion to hire at great expense outside marketing consultants to advise one of the blindingly obvious rather than consult the 'wider' game. Naturally the club and recreational game has not the time and perhaps not the inclination to play 3/4/5 day two innings matches but at least now the professional, international,state,county and provincial game reflects normal practice at the lower weekend levels and now plays most forms of the game and hopefully is much the better for it.
