COUNTY CRICKET BLOG: Marketing trends in County Cricket | Week 6 Previews | Chaos at Derby | Cricket Paper back this weekend | Why invest in Yorkshire? | Tom Harrison paid £1.13m in final four months
I love this part of the season. The Championship games have hit a nice Thursday-to-Sunday rhythm, the white-ball events are yet to start and, this week, everyone features.
If only the weather would be prepared to play ball.
Whether it is Anderson v Broad, Smith and Pujara v the Division Two bowlers, Leicestershire v expectations or Yorkshire v itself, there are narratives everywhere. The County Championship just gets better and better in the eyes of its devotees but how can it reach a wider audience?
Here are some of the trends I have noticed this season in the way the county game sells itself.
Counties are thinking a little differently about marketing. There are more reciprocal deals between counties as well as events and promotions to reach different audiences, see this example from Warwickshire this week. Meanwhile, Somerset have got The Wurzels playing after their 50-over fixture with Sussex. As one Twitter wag commented “Come for Ali Orr. Stay for Ooo-Arrrrr!”
Leveraging the YouTube streams. They are a great product now but I sense a growing desire to get more out of them. This is right in my consulting wheelhouse and, for me, they should be used intelligently and considerately to promote the game further. The footage and camerawork are not up to Sky’s live football coverage (its three cameras in standard defnition versus about 30 in super high definition) but clips are being used on Sky Sports News if something special occurs. So package up those highlights and send them out for wider reach on newspaper websites etc or, better still, create a round-up show, even if it is only on YouTube. The Championship is an unwieldy beast to follow so trusted, immediate and entertaining curation is critical. In an ideal world, a workaround could be found to allow the high-quality BBC teams commentary to continue and the clubs to market and monetise a little. Or at least gain data and knowledge on the fanbase. But keep little or no barrier between the streams and the viewers - very few pre-roll ads, no payment and only a seamless log-in process. It is the county game’s greatest marketing tool which, in the long term, will grow, not reduce, attendance.
A lack of quality content outside of paywalls. This is a tough one because worthy journalism takes time and skill to produce and we should have moved on from the idea that everything found on the internet is free. However, as both a creator and curator in this space, there is a dire need for informing, engaging content to grow interest in the county game. Yet most of the best work has a restricted reach.
New ‘old-style’ content. There seems to be more media out there these days in ‘older’ digital genres such as podcasts and fantasy leagues. In the former category, more fans are producing audio dedicated to the county they follow. Worcestershire and Hampshire have joined the likes of Somerset and Essex in making fan-run team-centred podcasts. Meanwhile, the Cricket Draft has become a little content factory. All good news.
Finally, allow me a little indulgence. The Cricket Paper is back this weekend after a year-long absence and my Grumbler column returns with it. The monthly magazines have their glossy, long-term view and immediate digital content is key but hopefully there is space among county cricket’s niche audience for a weekly paper in-season.
When I trained as a journalist many years ago my back-of-a-fag-packet career plan was 1) get to a national newspaper as soon as possible 2) write about football then, after the inevitable burnout, 3) end my career writing achingly poignant pieces for a cricket magazine.
Inevitably, life got in the way. But I’ll say this.
Writing that column and this newsletter is, by far, my least lucrative work each week, however it is the area in which I take the most care, the most pride and the most joy.
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County Championship Week 5 Review
County Championship Team Of The Week: Who Joins Ollie Robinson In Our XI? (Cricketer)
Chaotic finish at Derby as umpires confused over run-chase rules (Cricinfo)
Perfect Pujara Converts Again As Cricket Royalty Lights Up Worcester (Cricketer)
Marnus Labuschagne rediscovers balance at Yorkshire's expense with devastating 170 (Cricinfo)
Regal Labuschagne Puts Yorkshire To Sword (BBC Sport)
Hampshire Collapse Spectacularly In Innings Defeat By Warwickshire (Cricketer)
Rushworth leads Bears to big win over Hampshire (BBC Sport)
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News, Views and Interviews
Signing: Patel (Durham - overseas - 7 Champ games)
Contract: Handscomb (Leicestershire - 1 extra game)
The Coronation Review – Immaculately Rehearsed, Touching And Shakespearean (Guardian)
"I missed the 1953 coronation because my father, then an avowed republican, deliberately shunned it & took the family off to a rain-soaked county cricket match instead."
Michael Billington, Guardian drama critic - 1971 to 2019.
Archer Returns To Work With ECB And Sussex With Ashes Place In Doubt (The Argus)
David Willey: Northants name 2013 hat-trick hero as T20 Blast skipper (BBC Sport)
Marnus Labuschagne is proving himself the consummate modern overseas player (Telegraph)
Yorkshire CCC could receive foreign investment in refinancing plan (Guardian)
Indian investors in talks to pay off Yorkshire's massive debt (Telegraph)
ECB could VETO Saudi Arabia's proposed investment in Yorkshire (Mail)
I have questions about this story. How does foreign investment affect Yorkshire’s status as a members’ club? If, as stated, an injection of £15m does not bring equity then why invest? And, just how badly do Yorkshire want to stop the return of Colin Graves?
John Blain launches crowdfunding appeal to clear his name in Yorkshire racism scandal (Telegraph)
How English cricket disappeared (New Statesman)
Northamptonshire Unveil Renovated Player and Officials Facilities (Northamptonshire CCC)
Billings issues skin cancer warning after treatment (BBC Sport)
Ebony Rainford-Brent: England World Cup winner joins ECB as a non-executive director (BBC Sport)
IPL and other T20 franchise leagues ‘pose threat to ECB’s financial future’ (Guardian)
T20 franchise leagues a threat to Hundred, warns ECB (Times)
IPL team owner: Turn Test cricket into once-a-year events like Wimbledon (Telegraph)
The Hundred: Advantages, Problems and Solutions (Noughtiechildpodcast)
Honestly, I do try to avoid writing about Teflon Tom Harrison and the tournament-that-shall-not-be-named every week. But then you get paragraphs such as this in the Times:
“The report also reveals that the former CEO Tom Harrison, who stepped down in June last year, earned £1.13m for his final four months in the position, believed to be the most paid to a sport’s governing body chief in a single year.
“The £1.13m payment to Harrison tops the £819,000 paid to the FA’s chief executive Mark Bullingham last year.
“The sum is believed to cover four months’ salary, a pay-off, and bonuses paid under the ECB’s long-term incentive plan (LTIP). Harrison’s salary package was £502,000 the previous year. The LTIP was devised as a loyalty bonus scheme for key people at the ECB and the report shows total pay to “key management personnel [including Harrison and other directors]” rose to from £2.5m to £6.3m with the increase due to the LTIP which was paid in February 2022.”
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The Times report adds:
“Richard Thompson, the ECB chairman who took over last year, has said he is against the principle of the LTIP and believes the chief executive’s bonus should reflect “growth, participation and the success of the England teams”.”
That is not to say he’s as angry as me but it seems to be management speak for ‘these bonuses were plain wrong’.
Later on in the Times, CEO Richard Gould talks of an existential problem - losing star players to the IPL means media rights drop means a major hole in finances. This does not square with the poll in this newsletter last week in which two-thirds of readers said just “let them go”.
You-know-what could never be a solution for that. But the ECB was perfectly happy to contract the game and kill the county structure in its efforts to smash this obscenely shaped piece into a cricketing jigsaw it was never made to fit. And if, just by brute force and the grease of hidden funds, you rammed it home, it would create a Picasso of a global picture when everyone was painting a Monet.
I cannot see a viable short-term solution here. As I wrote a couple of weeks ago, this process was triggered by a set of mistakes years ago in the pursuit of short-term cash over long-term resilience. We are still making the same decisions with the same motivations and yet seem surprised when we get the same results.
Remember, we are taking on India here. India, who last month overtook China as the world’s most populous country. India, who despite many deep-seated social issues, have one of the fastest-growing economies in the world. India’s IPL, one of the biggest sports entities in the world.
As I have written before, my solution is accepting less and building long-term resilience. Things can change. In the 1980s, English football was in trouble, now the Premier League is the most important annual sports competition in the world. Until the Magic Johnson-Larry Bird era, NBA basketball was struggling for popular resonance. Now it is challenging NFL for cultural dominance (if not media revenue) in the US.
It is not something sports executives will like but, for now, English cricket might have to accept being The Championship to the IPL’s Premier League. It will lose its best talent and be considered inferior but it can double down on passion, identity and player development to sustain itself.
It is not the future we want but it might have to be the one we accept.
And finally…
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