The Big Losses, Wads and Strike League

The Big Bash League has lost $33 million in its first 5 years and is deemed a runaway success, but by what measure?

• Conflicting reports coming from Australia now appear to climb down from previous inflated positive affects on grassroots participation numbers, the alleged driving force for the ECB to adopt the BBL model in the first place.
• There appears to have been some wealth distribution in attracting overseas talent to BBL franchises, to the apparent detriment of local investment, that now cries out for extra funding.  
• An imminent explosion of TV revenue has caused conflict between the players and CA, both wanting bigger slices of the pie, with an Ashes player strike being threatened to force hands.

So which of these "successes" do the the ECB wish to emulate with their version in 2020?

I think the cash loss over the first 5 years is guaranteed, but at least Counties will get their their cut of the action (£1.3m) to off set their further loss of revenue from sponsorship and ticket sales as County Cricket gets a further downgrade.

Spending the sums of money being banded about on marketing will raise the profile in those centres where franchises have been implanted, for sure but beyond that, who knows? So what will the impact be on participation, again who knows?  Hopefully the All Stars programme will take-off but the ECB haven't got a good track record with long term projects. Whatever happened to Kwik Cricket and how is All Stars so drastically different from that?

Beyond five years of expected financial losses, will the ECB continue to back the venture if they are having to market events continually and are only half filling venues, even when they've put all their eggs in this basket. Again the ECB don't appear to carry through any of their own grand ideas.....

• Sunday Championship game starts..... scrapped.
• Regular Friday night T20 matches spread over several months ...... scrapped
• Listening to the spectators and their preferences...... scrapped
• Two Divisions of the Championship, to raise standards ....... matches now reduced.

Perhaps a players' strike is on the distant horizon, as job losses look to be inevitable or at least salary budgets being reduced at County level is probable. Their will be two classes of profession, beyond the capped and uncapped, being employed by Counties, the haves (T20 franchise income) with inflated rewards and the have-nots, those expected to fill the void left by those called away to play for the plastic franchise teams.

Again ECB it begs the question, why bother with this folly at all?

Call for investigation into BBL’s reported $A33 million loss.

Russell Gould.

Melbourne Herald Sun.

Wednesday, 31 May 2017.

PTG 2153-10924.

Cricket Australia (CA) is reported to have lost $A33 million (£UK19.2 m) over the first five years of its Big Bash League (BBL) Twenty20 competition, the high profile cash cow not being the revenue earner many believe.   The expected revenue to be pulled in by the next TV deal for the tournament, which could jump from $A20 million (£11.6 m) a year currently to as much as $A60 million (£34.9 m) a season, is a key driver in predictions of upwards of $A2 billion (£1.16 bn) in revenue for CA over the next five years.

Upon hearing of the purported $33 million loss, former Australian batsman Simon Katich argued that such a claim needed independent investigation, and added weight to the players' claim for independent mediation to settle the present pay dispute; a request that has so far been denied twice (PTG 2149-10905, 28 May 2017). "The claims that CA has managed to lose money on the biggest success story in world cricket must be independently investigated”, said Katich. "Record crowds, record ratings, record sponsorships and merchandising sales each and every year, yet CA are claiming a loss. It defies logic and good business sense”. 

Katich, who is the Australian Cricketers’ Association (ACA) Players’ Liaison Manager, also said:  "It also defies logic that you would claim a financial loss, yet not recommend a model that shares the risk”, Katich said. "It may well be an ill-conceived negotiation tactic, which itself is silly given mediation is the way to go. The BBL and [Womens’] BBL provide the best platform to promote cricket to kids and families given they are turning up to these events in their hundreds-of-thousands over the course of the season”.

A CA spokesman was quoted in an article posted on its web site on Wednesday as saying in response to Katich: "The BBL, and now the WBBL, are an investment in growing the game. In particular, ticket prices have been kept low because the primary purpose is to attract more fans and families – and it has been hugely successful at that”.  CA has invested heavily in the BBL since its 2011 inception, but at the end of its second season in 2013, announced an overall profit of $A1.5 million (£871,950) for "domestic T20 operations". 

At that time Mike McKenna, CA's then Executive General Manager Operations, said the national body had lost $A10 million (£5.8 m) on the enterprise and confirmed after the season after that that the franchise-based competition was still not returning a profit.  He said at the time: "But that's a deliberate growth strategy.  The [BBL] is about bringing new audiences to the game and about reinvesting money to grassroots cricket. It's not about making money”.

Two years ago after the Champions League Twenty20 tournament project was abandoned, McKenna said that the money from that competition had helped the BBL to return a profit in its early years (PTG 1595-7720, 19 July 2015).

Both CA and the ACA are fighting over the best way to divide the big influx of cash between the players, grassroots cricket, investment for growth and administrative spend in their next Memorandum of Understanding (PTG 2153-10923 above)