England & Wales Cricket Board To Spend More Than £6M On T20 Marketing

The England & Wales Cricket Board will spend more than £6M ($7.5M)-a-year on "marketing and running the proposed new Twenty20 tournament," according to Elizabeth Ammon of the LONDON TIMES. The budget "completely eclipses anything previously spent on the marketing of English domestic cricket." The proposed new tournament will see 36 matches played over 38 days, meaning that about £160,000 ($198,704)-per-match "will be allocated for marketing, promoting and operations." By comparison, Surrey County Cricket Club, which "almost always" sells out the Kia Oval for its Blast matches, spent just £35,000 ($43,466) on the marketing of its T20 campaign. Financial forecasts for the new tournament prepared by accounting firm Deloitte "predict that the central costs of the tournament" will be upwards of £15M ($18.6M)-a-year, half of which will go to budgets for players and coaches and the rest primarily on the marketing and "activation" costs of each of the matches (LONDON TIMES, 4/10).