The average American sports fan may never have heard of Australia’s Big Bash League, but the incredibly rapid growth of this six year old cricket upstart is quickly attracting the attention of every major professional sports league in the world.
Established in 2011 by Cricket Australia, the national governing body of the sport, the KFC Big Bash League (BBL) is a domestic Twenty20 cricket tournament featuring eight-city based franchises spanning the island continent. The BBL was established with one goal in mind - attract and engage new fans (youth, families, female audiences) to the sport of cricket and protect the future of the game. Since its inception, the league has been a nothing short of a massive and resounding success throughout Australia and amongst the global cricket community.
“The Big Bash League was born as an answer to the question, ‘how does the sport of cricket safeguard its future?’ explains Anthony Everard, Head of the BBL. “Cricket is very popular here in Australia and abroad, but there was a significant part of our population that was not engaged in the sport. This is due in large part to an increasingly larger proportion of immigrants coming to Australia from countries that don’t play cricket. Therefore, our core goal was to launch a product specifically targeted towards people who did not care much for the sport.”
Imagine if you combined a Major League Baseball game with a visit to Disney World, and you’re only beginning to scratch the surface of the BBL experience. A wild, 6-week tournament with star players, bright colored uniforms, a game experience specifically for kids, cheap prices, non-stop entertainment and condensed, fast-paced action in jammed packed stadiums and a national simulcast - that’s what Big Bash delivers.
While traditional fans of cricket may be turned off by this adrenaline-charged version of game that hasn’t changed much in the last century, the Big Bash League never had the intention of catering to them anyway. This is precisely why the league has been so incredibly successful, but is also counter-intuitive to how every other professional sports league in the world operates. Unlike the BBL, most upstart sports leagues don’t intentionally try to alienate traditional fans of the game, a approach which is almost guaranteed to end in disaster. Much of this unorthodox strategy can be linked back to Cricket Australia’s partnership with Chicago based Property Consulting Group (PCG), the sports marketing agency of record for both the governing body and the Big Bash League.
According to Dan Migala, Chief Innovation Officer and co-founder of PCG, “From a fan development and engagement perspective, the BBL decided early on it wasn’t going to be all things to all consumers,. The strategy was simple: own families. Fortunately, the BBL was disciplined enough to know that to own families, teams need to nurture fans before they can engage with them. From the league’s inception, they scaled a simple approach to family fan engagement that was rooted in the repeatable process of: 1) Grow; 2) Engage; and 3) Transact.”
Every aspect of Big Bash has been organized around maximizing the opportunity for fans to attend games. The season starts when the school year finishes and finishes when the school year starts. With an absence of cost-effective things to do during the summer months in Australia, a family of four can attend a BBL game for just $40. The league has even struck partnerships with entertainment brands like Warner Brothers, allowing players to wear super hero uniforms during games. Above all, when league attendance the first few years was modest, Big Bash continued to focus on developing enduring relationships with its targeted fan base instead of using short-term marketing gimmicks that could fill seats but would hurt the leagues brand in the long run.
And guess what? It’s worked. Average attendance in the BBL has risen to 28,346 this season, up 22% from this time last year – and seven of the eight clubs have already broken their domestic cricket attendance records. Moreover, TV ratings are up 11% as well, with more than 1 million people watching each game, and merchandise sales have increased by a ridiculous 44% over 2014-15!
Let that settle in for a moment. In just six years, a start-up cricket league in Australia has close to the same average attendance as Major League Baseball, which was started in 1869.
“Too often, teams and leagues think season-to-season,” explains Migala. “The learning from the BBL is there was a vision to think differently and think short, medium and long-term in their strategy. The internal approach in all of their strategies was to: 1) be bold; 2) make yourself a little uncomfortable; and 3) be realistic with a side of optimism. All of the BBL's fan engagement, branding and go-to-market strategies are rooted in this internal approach and it’s a powerful template for teams and leagues who want to innovate in their business strategy,” he elaborates.
Part of the league’s ongoing growth strategy was the launch of the WBBL last year, a women’s league that replicates the men’s competition closely. The branding of the clubs is the same, and often the women and men play double headers. Not surprisingly, the WBBL was so well received that broadcast partners added additional games to the schedule this season. In fact, the recent WBBL Melbourne derby earlier this month drew 12,901 spectators, with a peak TV audience of 439,000 viewers and a national average of 372,000. By comparison, the WNBA drew an average of 7,318 fans a game in 2015, while combined television viewership fell by 14% to 202,000 viewers.
The immense success of the Big Bash teaches sports leagues around the world a valuable lesson - you can’t attempt to create and sustain revenue-producing business opportunities in sports without evolving. The BBL has constantly focused on being innovative and has purposely strived to take as many risks as possible, while making sure to stand for something and create long lasting memories for its fans.
While it’s still early, because of keen strategic forethought and synergistic partnerships, the Big Bash has positioned itself to become one of the most successful professional sports leagues in the world.
Jason Belzer is Founder of GAME, Inc. and a Professor of Organizational Behavior and Sports Law at Rutgers University. Follow him on Twitter @JasonBelzer.
