This is an easy one to solve.
When choosing a sport to watch on TV, people look for an emotional investment that goes beyond the need to be ‘entertained’.
Most of the Australian Open coverage features non Australians and although they’re the best in the world, it’s hard to get emotionally vested in the outcome. We’ll flick to the cricket subconsciously because simply put, Australia is playing, suddenly we have someone or something to really barrack for.
So why are cricket crowds down then?
Cricket doesn’t attract new fans to games, it’s the same people every summer going through the turnstiles. It’s a mix of backyard, grade, park and retired cricketers who love the game. The problem is these people are the same people who attended the Twenty/20 Big Bash recently. And anyone who has been to a Twenty/20 game will tell you, it’s hard to go back and sit through a one day international after the fly by the seat of your pants of Twenty/20.
Cricket already knows how to capture TV eyeballs and bring people through the gates, it’s called Twenty/20. Cricket needs to tweak the packaging of Twenty/20 to meet the needs of broadcasters, advertisers, players and fans. Get the formula right and cricket won’t have to worry about crowd figures.
As for Tennis, it’s more difficult. It needs to produce more home grown talent, that we know, but it also needs more heroes and more villains, players to hate, players to love. Only then will it attract more TV viewers.
I can’t believe you left out the “Full-Strength” issue in relation to attending Cricket games! That’s the major reason I stopped attending. I’ve never been (and never would be) kicked out for being inebriated but watching cricket with your mates will never be the same without a cold beer in hand and we’ll be damned if we’ll sit there with expensive, watered down beer when we can just watch it at someones house the right way and at a fraction of the price.
The big issue with alcohol and cricket is the length of a game. Unfortunately not everyone can sit drinking for six+ hours in the sun and behave. That’s just physics. Thanks for the comment Nugby.