Cricket Australia has said that viewing figures for the first half of the Big Bash League have justified the national governing body’s decision to switch coverage of the Twenty20 cricket competition to free-to-air television and defer the start of the event.
Australian commercial broadcaster Network Ten, which dislodged pay-television broadcaster Fox Sports to acquire rights for the event in a five-year deal, from 2013-14 to 2017-18, has attracted audiences in excess of one million viewers for a quarter of its matches so far. Ten’s coverage has attracted an average of 878,000 viewers for the first innings and 973,000 for the second innings in matches.
Most match finishes have been pushed back by 45 minutes to about 11pm while the start date of the tournament was shifted from December 7 to December 20. Mike McKenna, the governing body’s executive general manager of operations, said that pushing most of the tournament into January was “definitely the way to go.”
He added: “The more programming we've got in the holiday period, once work and school is out of the way, the better. We thought it [later starts] might impact to an extent, but certainly we didn't think it would be that damaging. It's holiday time, we don't have the pressure of kids having to be home in bed and up for school the next day.”
McKenna said that the broadcast ratings on Ten had been “double what we budgeted and probably 25 per cent more than what we'd hoped for in a really perfect world.” He added: “It's definitely paying off for both us and Channel Ten. They put a lot on the line in order to get the rights off Fox Sports for the Big Bash… and we also had a lot at stake.”