County Championship Attendances

The new county championship gets underway is just a matter of weeks now, and instead of writing about who I think will be successful in the upcoming season or who would struggle. I thought it would be much more productive, and interesting  to write about the more underlying problem in the domestic long format of the game. Attendances.

553,000 people watched county championship cricket LIVE last year, and on the surface, that seems like quite a big number.

But if you bi-sect it and work out the average amount of people who watch every County Championship game, you quickly realise that actually, it isn't that many people at all.



A Bare County Championship Stand

Attendances on average were 800 people per day at any given County Championship game.

Possible reasons for these attendances?

1. The Rise of T20 cricket. It's no coincidence that since the arrival of T20 cricket, interest in County Championship cricket has gone down considerably. This may have had some effect on the attendances at CC games.
2. People can't afford to go to games, an adult could probably get into most County games for under £15 for the whole days play. The food can be expensive but homemade food can be taken, so overall a day at the cricket for two could cost little over £30, which is dirt cheap compared to other sports. Because of the cheapness I think this reason is invalid, but I've chucked it in the list just to even things out.
3. People just aren't available to go to games. County Championship games start midweek when people are at work, and so they aren't physically able to get to games. But this reason is slightly flawed, the games finale is on a Sunday or Saturday depending on what day it started on, most people are not at work at the weekend.

I think the reason for the low attendances is simply that interest in County Championship cricket is just not high enough, this is partly due to the rise of T20 cricket but partly due to the lack of media coverage in my opinion. For example I support Leicestershire, I live in Norfolk. No games are ever on TV, with the exception of maybe one or two at the end of the season, and I can't get any coverage on the radio. This means I have to browse the Internet just to find a scoreboard, and if I get a text commentary I'll be damn lucky.

It's a lot of effort to go through with not a lot of reward, a dull scoreboard which is usually slow updating is not a lot of reward for searching for a decent website to look on, and I can see why a lot of fans just wouldn't bother.

A solution?

Well - I think a weekly TV show dedicated to just County Championship would be perfect, cricket's version of Match of the Day.

Every Sunday night, sit down, relax, and watch your team in action. A summary of all the games that took place that week, with debates taking place regarding whatever matter had arisen in that week.

Cricket fans would get to see how their team have been getting on, and interest would start to rise. This would result in people getting more and more gripped by how their team are doing, and this could influence people getting to games.

I personally think it's a pretty damn good idea, although I am quite bias because I am the fool who created the idea in the first place!

Feel free to add your opinion on the matter in the comments box on this page, or on our Twitter page @TheSillyPoint_