‘New fans are now watching’
The Hundred finals take place at Lord’s today. Chasing the new urban audience the ECB craves with crash, bang cricket, sets of five and resident DJs has pulled in the crowds but also pushed a lot of noses out of joint. NEIL SQUIRES asks whether the new tournament has been worth the upheaval.
WE GOT hit hard by Covid-19 in the run-up after losing quite a lot of our big-name overseas players. So we wondered how it would go in terms of performance but I just think the cricket has been amazing.
The women’s competition has been a real stand-out for me. The profile it has given women’s cricket is phenomenal.
Massive credit has to go to the players and coaches who have embraced the format – I have not had one complaint it is too quick – they have fully bought into it.
They are telling us the standard is close to international cricket and the atmospheres in the grounds are as well.
In terms of attendances, we are at around 90 percent of capacity, which is amazing – we set a budget target of 60 percent.
The key thing is that 19 percent are kids, 20 percent is female and round about 60 percent is under 45, which is really positive in terms of bringing new people into stadiums.
I can only see those demographics improving over time.
TV audiences far exceed 10 million, which is beyond our expectations. But the key stat is that 44 percent of viewers have not watched any other cricket this year, which suggests we are bringing in a new audience – one of the objectives of The Hundred.
The digital and social reach has been amazing – more than 200,000 downloads of our app and about 4.9 million video views – so it is getting a lot of engagement beyond TV. You have to be relevant in a digital space when you are thinking about a younger audience. I always thought we would get to where we are now but that it would take until probably Year Three to do so. We’re absolutely delighted.
There’s always areas to do better and we will look at what we can improve on for next year.
But what matters is that people are watching it, people are entertained by it and kids are being inspired to pick up a bat and ball.
Participation was a big objective for us on the back of The Hundred and we’ve seen a 230 percent increase in the number of kids playing in August compared to 2018-19.That’s exactly what we wanted.