The Lemon Fool

So you may or may not have noticed, but the cricket world cup is on. Before it kicked off, the cricket grandees told us they hoped hosting the event here would help spread the popularity of the sport.

Fast forward a few weeks, all today's newspaper front pages feature the England women's world cup team. Cricket news nowhere to be seen. Presumably buried in the sports pages.

Why? - Because the football is on terrestrial TV and everyone can watch it! So it has caught the attention of the public. The cricket grandees cashed in by selling their sport to Sky where only 10% of the population can watch it. Result, negligible public exposure. The muppets!

Women's football 1. Cricket out for a duck.

I only hope the FA learn their lesson and keep women's football on terrestrial for a few years. I'll be watching.

Gryff

gryffron wrote:Fast forward a few weeks, all today's newspaper front pages feature the England women's world cup team. Cricket news nowhere to be seen. Presumably buried in the sports pages.

Why? - Because the football is on terrestrial TV and everyone can watch it! So it has caught the attention of the public. The cricket grandees cashed in by selling their sport to Sky where only 10% of the population can watch it. Result, negligible public exposure. The muppets!

In Britan cricket has never had the sort of following that football has. County grounds nowadays only ever sell out for limited over matches (especially T20) and internationals. By selling the rights to Sky the ECB has brought much more money into the game than there ever was. Furthermore they actually cover it in detail, including overseas tours and some county championship games. When the BBC used to have television rights to cricket they would routinely interrupt coverage with horse racing, news, trailers and weather reports for anything up to 30 minutes.

England women's football team played and won last night (Thursday). So it's natural that it gets coverage the following day, especially since the BBC has gone into overdrive when promoting the few sporting events for which they still have live coverage. The BBC didn't show the Women's Cricket World Cup last year (Sky did) and guess what? BBC TV largely ignored it. Cover the sports for which you have the rights, do your best to ignore the rest (Sky are the experts at this).

The England men's cricket team last played on Tuesday and they aren't playing until Sunday. So for England cricket there isn't the need to post-match reports and pre-match reports will appear on Saturday and Sunday morning.

Next year cricket is going to be on terrestial TV with this 100-ball competition. The ECB claimed that this was an innovation but they were really pushing a shortened version of T20 so that matches would finish in time for the BBC's Nine O'Clock News.

Being on Sky and BT Sport doesn't stop the BBC from extensively covering the Premier League football when it happens. They've recently copied Sky Sports' news Saturday afternoon coverage with ex-professionals watching the 3pm premier league games on TV and talking about them to the audience.

SalvorHardin wrote:
In Britan cricket has never had the sort of following that football has. County grounds nowadays only ever sell out for limited over matches (especially T20) and internationals. .

well thats been the case ever since I have watched cricket since the early 1970s, when cricket was on FTA, including every sunday afternoon, every test match in entirety and plenty of one day cup stuff throughout the summer - oh plus the ODIs of course.


its just what it is.

Of course - nearly everybody lives "close" to a football league team.

Live outside of eighteen counties and you face a fair trek to see 1st class cricket.

didds

didds wrote:nearly everybody lives "close" to a football league team. Live outside of eighteen counties and you face a fair trek to see 1st class cricket.

Feel for the good citizens of Cornwall, who have neither. Their closest football team is Plymouth, whilst the closest premier league team is probably Bournemouth.

The closest county cricket would be Taunton.

Although West Wales would even be worse off.

Lootman wrote:

didds wrote:nearly everybody lives "close" to a football league team. Live outside of eighteen counties and you face a fair trek to see 1st class cricket.

Feel for the good citizens of Cornwall, who have neither......
Although West Wales would even be worse off.

Is there is any coincidence that rugby Uunion to be predantic) has a strong following in both areas, stemming from local teams/involvement ?

didds