People talking about how the league is dying....
Average crowds for the season - 18,300. That’s better than the NRL by 3,000 per game and almost double the A-League. It’s also dragged down by games like the one in Alice Springs where it was 50 degrees and only 900 odd showed up, and by all the smoke effected games where people stayed in. Also effected by the number of daytime games during the working week.
The night time FTA games were averaging over 500,000 watchers on TV. This was a drop, but it also doesn’t take into account the number of people watching it on Kayo.
I don’t think the league is dying at all - it’s normalising. It has numbers better or on par with every other sports league in the country barring the AFL. It was never going to maintain the numbers it put in during those early seasons when it was new and exciting. But the numbers it’s currently putting in are far from the doom and gloom some people think they are.
https://www.smh.com.au/sport/cricket/big-bash-tv-ratings-down-on-foxtel-seven-20200130-p53w7j.html
Cricket Australia have been hit with falling numbers in the stands and in living rooms around the country with TV ratings also down for the home-and-away rounds of this season's Big Bash League.
Designed to maintain interest throughout the tournament after complaints 12 months ago the competition dragged on, this season's condensed BBL schedule has not had more fans tuning into the game, despite it being the only top-level cricket available in this country since the Sydney Test.
As reported last week, average crowds fell for a third consecutive season, though some strong turnouts across the Australia Day long weekend limited the drop to about seven per cent, according to numbers compiled by the Austadiums website.
Accordingly, aggregate crowds fell in BBL09 as for the first time since 2016/17 there was no increase in regular-season games.
CA have pointed to the increase in afternoon games due to a shorter tournament as a primary factor behind the l
ower numbers, though audience figures also dipped when comparing audiences for night matches. For Foxtel, which is majority owned by News Corp, there was a downturn of 7.4 per cent while Seven's audience dropped by 4.6 per cent.
OzTAM numbers do not cover Foxtel's streaming app Kayo Sports, which a source said recorded a big spike in subscriptions for Australia's recent one-day international series in India.
Dobson said at the launch of the finals on Tuesday that the game's TV partners had been happy with the BBL's performance this season.
This was echoed by a source at one rights holder, who believed the success of Ash Barty and Nick Kyrgios at the Australian Open, which is broadcast by this masthead's owner Nine, had dinted their ratings.
There is, however, still an average of
more than 550,000 viewers across the two networks for night games this season, which would be the envy of rival summer competitions such as the A-League and the NBL. The BBL is the highest rating domestic league in the country.
Despite the drop in crowds, the BBL has attracted more than 1 million fans through the gates for the fifth consecutive season, which would have been unheard of for a domestic competition prior to the league's arrival in 2011/12.
The drop in TV and crowd numbers, however, point to a competition which is undergoing growing pains as it approaches its 10th birthday.
Attempts to grow TV numbers will not be helped by a busier international schedule next season, which will likely feature six men's ODIs against India and New Zealand as opposed to none this summer.
The governing body has said its preference is not to put the BBL in direct competition with the national men's team, which will further impact CA's flexibility with the fixture.
CA have said it is exploring how to stage more double headers and games in the afternoon, when TV numbers are lower.
BBL boss Alistair Dobson, whom CA did not make available for comment for this story, said this week TV numbers had been "holding strong".
"It's a little difficult to get an accurate year-on-year comparison [when] more afternoon games changes the mix," Dobson told SEN radio station on Wednesday.
"The core product if you like, the prime-time night games are still holding really strong in an audience sense. We work closely with both Seven and Foxtel on how we can continue to drive audiences on TV."
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