T20 debate swirls despite Blast success

There is a line in the film Death of a Gentleman where Gideon Haigh asks the question: “Does cricket make money to exist or does it exist to make money?”

It is a question that ECB executives should consider over the next few weeks as they seek to persuade the counties of their plans for a new-look domestic T20 competition.

Make no mistake: this debate is about money. If it was about reaching out to a new generation of supporters, there would be more emphasis on free-to-air broadcasting and less on the size of a potential broadcasting deal.

If it was about the quality of cricket, there would be recognition of the success of England and the relative failure of Australia and India in recent World T20 tournaments.

It’s all about money.

While the ECB executive will claim they have no preferred option among the five proposals suggested to the counties for the future of domestic T20 in recent weeks, it has become clear – it has been clear for months – that they want a city-based T20 competition involving eight freshly branded teams starting as soon as possible (realistically in 2018). This, they believe, will bring in substantial new revenue in broadcast deals – up to £50m is claimed – and a new audience to the game.

Sounds good, doesn’t it? But there is a downside. To maximise revenue, the competition would be sold to a subscription broadcaster – with a perfunctory amount of action shown free over other platforms – and it would be played only in a few larger cities.

So, no place for Northants (who have reached Finals Day three times in the last four years), no place for Leicestershire (who have won the competition more than anyone else) and no place for Somerset (who sell out just about every game they host). Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, who have seen ticket sales improve markedly in recent times, would also be among the excluded, as would Sussex and Essex, who have been selling out T20 games for almost as long as the competition has been played.

Not just that, but to appease broadcasters – Sky’s current deal for live English cricket runs until 2019 – the competition would be played in a block that would see games scheduled just about every day of the week in a July window.

If that sounds familiar, it is because it was tried as recently as 2012. It left the competition dangerously at risk of a bad spell of weather – gate figures dropped by more than 50% (from 633,957 to 313,215, though there were also 54 fewer games) that year – and asked too much of spectators. Instead of inviting them to attend a home game every second Friday, there might be two or three in a week (Surrey hosted four home games in five days in 2012), with no predictability of schedule, no pattern and no time to budget. There are good reasons it was discontinued.

The smaller counties are rightly worried that they will be marginalised by this new competition. They point out not just that it is contrary to the ECB’s constitution to stage a competition involving only eight sides – the constitution states explicitly that all competitions must involve all 18 counties (though the definition of the word “involve” may be open to some debate) – but that if they are seen to play in a lesser competition (the “LDV Vans Trophy of cricket”, as one CEO puts it), it will impact on their ability to attract players, spectators and, in time, their viability.

Those clubs would either surrender their best players to the city-based team for the duration of the tournament – not ideal as one of the options sees the County Championship season continuing at the same time – or lose them entirely.

Yes, they would share in some of the revenues – it looks as if they will be offered £1m each if they sanction the new tournament – to alleviate some of their short-term financial pressures but, long term, they risk sinking into irrelevance.

Because if there is no cricket broadcast free to air, if there is little cricket in state schools, if the mainstream media stop reporting on domestic cricket (the fact that the Telegraph no longer covers county cricket should send warning bells …

continue reading in source www.espncricinfo.com