The cricket media have finally spotted the link between exorbitant ticket prices and poor attendance.
Or at least Jonathan Agnew and the BBC online team have – in what’s become a major talking point of the Edgbaston test.
Far too often, cricket journalists disparage poor attendance as evidence of uninterest or disloyalty – forgetting that unlike spectators, they not only enter for free, but get paid, a free lunch, and the best seats.
Attendance at Trent Bridge was good; so will Lord’s be and the Oval always sells out. Edgbaston is probably just one of those things that happens sometimes.
But ticket prices are far too high – and in recent years have become ridiculous. There are two key reasons for this. First, the host counties nowadays have to pay the ECB very large sums for staging a test. The cost is passed on to spectators, as was obviously going to happen. Thanks a bunch, ECB.
Secondly, because the majority of tests still sell very well, the counties rightly believe they can get away with it. In terms of revenue, they can. But it’s at the price of narrowing the social demographic of live cricket. It’s all very well for white collar professionals, usually men with disposal income, to fork out £80 for a ticket – a different matter though for low-wage earners, especially those with children. Put simply, if you’re a youngster with siblings and your dad isn’t well off, you are very unlikely ever to experience a day at the cricket.
Cricket belongs to us all; the ECB are only the custodians. It is their responsibility to cap and regulate ticket prices at affordable levels in order that everyone has an opportunity to go. As TV access to cricket is also expensive, all the more need to defend spectators’ interests.
Meanwhile at Edgbaston, there are four ways of interpreting our inability to bowl out Pakistan on Sunday, depending on your mood.
1. We wanted to see a proper contest, didn’t we?
2. Our bowlers very quickly lose their cutting edge when the ball doesn’t swing or a stubborn partnership takes root.
3. Bowling sides out stupidly easily is useless in terms of Ashes preparation. It will have done our attack a lot of good to have to work to bowl a side out – for the first time since South Africa.
4. Pakistan batted well.
5. We are still due to bowl Pakistan out twice in the match for a total of just 370. Not bad.
£20 today to watch just over 1 session of cricket – a total rip off. £5 entry and kids go free could have created a crowd and might have interested people who have not been to test cricket before.
On your point (2) – it was concerning that the whole england plan yesterday was based on Swann bowling over after over without trying round the wicket or a different line with the fast bowlers just bowling bouncers at all the batsmen. Hope this is not the sign of things to come.
Worth noting that the Oval has not sold out as they were touting tickets at the Pro40 match (or whatever it is called this year) at the Oval last week. TMS referred to it on Friday when bemoaning the lack of attendance and the building site. They decided that the building site put people off!
The other factor missed in the article above is that we’ve just had two tests in the midlands and about to have two in London. Might have got better attendance with one in the North and one in the South/West instead.
Interesting. I don’t understand why we are playing test matches at a building site instead of a ground like the Rose Bowl. I hear that Hants have at least got a test NEXT year …. when the Rose Bowl is undergoing its own ground development! Crazy.
According to TMS, and their interviewees, the reason is that the ECB insisted on significant ground improvements from most of the major venues. As these will take several years, playing in a building site has been accepted as inevitable.
As to the main point, I completely agree. They’re bleeding the golden goose dry. It’s most obvious with the T20s. They’ve massively expanded the number of games, but now they’re all barely half full. I suspect they get the same gross attendance, just spread over far more games. The same seems to be happening in Tests.
Have you ever heard anyone say: “I was going to go for a day at the test match, but then I found out they were doing building work on part of the ground, so I didn’t really fancy it any more”.
The fact that’s even been suggested as a reason demonstrates how far out of touch some commentators are with the reality of being a supporter.
I think attendances are actually in good shape. My problem with the ticket prices is not that it suppresses crowds, but that it’s unfair – and it forcibly changes the demographic of live cricket’s constituency.
My guess about this summer’s poor crowds is that the Ashes have become so important now that all other series (bar perhaps South Africa) are an anti-climax. Perhaps a lot of people think – I’ll give it a miss this year.
It doesn’t help that, right now, few of the test nations are very dynamic or alluring. Only India, SA and Aus are a genuinely enticing prospect in English conditions, and there’s never been the frisson of rivalry between us and India.
This issue seems to come around every few years but in the long run attendances hold up or even prosper. If you watch the Botham’s Ashes video, it’s surprising how often the grounds look half full. Unthinkable now against Australia when tickets are like gold-dust.
But if test match attendances are actually declining, one obvious cause is the surfeit of international fixtures in the English summer. The audience for live cricket is finite in size – the more days’ play there are, the more thinly that audience is spread. And maybe the popularity of county T20 is a contributory factor – people choosing to attend a couple of T20s instead of their annual day at the test, as the atmosphere/opportunity to watch some cricket with your mates is just as good/