County cricket matters: Gate numbers may be small but the interest is high
Spring has finally sprung and county cricket returns to action this week. Cricket blogger Lizzy Ammon looks at the state of the county game
Great day out: There are few sports that offer better value for money than a day at a county cricket game
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County cricket has been on its last legs for as long as I can remember. So often is its imminent death proclaimed that I wonder if every year I am watching 13 zombies in white out there on the pitch.
It’s a true and worrying fact that crowds are small and getting smaller, although they are considerably larger than the old myth of a man and dog.
The crowds have never been enormous. There’s not really a way of getting round the fact that the sport is played largely on weekdays when most adults are at work and for the majority of the season, the kids are at school.
But small gates don’t mean small interest. Membership numbers are holding strong for most counties and, given what good value county membership represents, most of those with a real interest in the game will take out membership.
For many counties ticket sales were well down in 2012 and this has had a knock on effect on their finances - this is, of course, a genuine concern but we mustn't forget how monumentally wet 2012 was. Kent, for example, had their entire Tunbridge Wells festival wiped out by rain. It was an anomalous year and one that we shouldn't read too much into.
They don’t always help themselves though. This week, Easter school holiday and the first round of the County Championship, there is NO county cricket in London. Talk about shooting yourself in the foot. And there’s a whole heap more that counties and the ECB should be doing to promote the first-class game. Most noticeably they should be offering free tickets to local schools for kids to come in for the afternoon and evening sessions. There should also be more promotions and offers for the "saga" crowd as they are unflatteringly termed. With the best will in the world, the ones who are most likely to be able to watch first-class cricket regularly are the retired. Counties should be promoting ticket and membership offers around places such as The University of the Third Age, the Mother's Union, the WI - it's all very clichéd but this is the reality.
But ticket sales and membership numbers are not the only metrics by which interest in the county game should be measured. In days gone by the only way of knowing what was going on was via Ceefax or by waiting for the reports the next day in the papers. Now there are live scorecards all over the web, there are people live blogging and live tweeting and commenting on county matches from both press boxes and the stands. And from this year every ball of every single match will be commentated on via the BBC. There’s no way the BBC would have taken the decision to do this if they felt there was little interest in the game.
Just a quick trawl through Twitter and Cricinfo during the season would give you an indication of just how much interest there is (and indeed how little work is being done by some people sitting at their desks contributing to live county blogs) and the ECB/LVCC highlights packages and live scorecards get a high number of hits. As an example, the seven matches on the first day of the season in 2012 had 355,000 page views that day. The video highlights of championship matches got nearly 300,000 views last season. The interest is definitely there.
Of course, none of this online and digital engagement with the game translates into real pounds for the counties and this is a problem. Putting on first-class cricket is an expensive business and no more than a handful of counties posted a profit for 2012 (although the weather should be taken into account when looking at those figures). Finances remain a big headache for those running the game. It is a fact that gate numbers are in decline and this is a worry and something that shouldn't be ignored. Counties remain very reliant on the funding they receive from the ECB - this money isn't a handout as it is branded though. It's a redistribution of some of the revenue generated by Team England in recognition of the fact that it is the counties who find and develop talent to feed team England. It's also a statement about the fact that Cricket England is more than just the national team, it's grassroots, women's cricket, disability cricket and county cricket.
The financial situation for some counties is a concern and they have to continue to find ways to both increase their revenue and cut their costs. For many, this is involving the redevelopment of their grounds so that they can generate revenue from non-cricketing sources. Many industries have to change and diversify - there's no reason why cricket should be any different.
But interest in the County Championship is there and there would be more of it if there was less negativity about the game. We should celebrate it as a wonderfully exciting competition. We should shout much louder about that fact that going to watch county cricket remains about as good value for money as you can get watching live sport (it's no more than £15 to watch a full day's county championship cricket) and we should be appreciating the vast array of talent there is on display up and down the country every week. Nothing is more likely to lead to the demise of the game than the negative PR it constantly receives