The England & Wales Cricket Board on Monday at Millbank Tower in London "brought together representatives of all the nation’s counties and clubs to talk through the five-year plan for the sport," according to Andy Bull of the London GUARDIAN. The ECB presented a strategy document called Inspiring Generations that "contained a lot of information on where the game is now" and "even more about where it wants it to get to," but "rather less on how it is actually going to move between the two." The "little details of what the ECB is actually going to do in order to deliver any of the many fine things it is promising will, it said, follow sometime soon." The first thing "everyone wanted to talk about was the 'new competition.'" It still does "not have an official name and it is not clear what the teams will be called or exactly where the games will be played." However, ECB CEO Tom Harrison was "anxious to do what he described as 'some myth-busting' about it." Harrison said, “The new competition is being designed to appeal to cricket fans first and foremost, but then it’s also for a broader audience.” Harrison confirmed that the ECB has committed to spending £180M ($232M) on the new competition over five years. Even so, he was "keen to stress that it was 'already a profitable venture' because it was a central part" of the £1.1B ($1.4B) TV rights deal. Harrison said, “We would not be on free-to-air TV without that new competition and we would not have the premium that we got through the media rights process had that competition not been there” (GUARDIAN, 1/15).
INSIDE THE NUMBERS: In London, Mike Atherton reported that although Harrison was "keen to stress the solid foundations upon which the strategy is building, such as ticket sales" in '18 which were at "record levels for a non-Ashes summer, there were more worrying statistics embedded in the strategy notes." The "average age of the 10.5 million followers of the game is 50;" 3% of test tickets are "sold to juniors;" 22% of schools "play cricket, making it only the eighth-most popular team sport within that cohort;" and 35% of women "say the game is inaccessible to them." Harrison "rejected suggestions that the short-form market had peaked, brushing off concerns that the extended Big Bash League in Australia this season was a warning sign about overkill." He said, “This is a clear and ambitious statement from us that we can be bigger, that people will be able to say, ‘Cricket is a game for me,' no matter who you are or where you come from” (LONDON TIMES, 1/15).
