ECB pay price for empty premises (13 June 1999)

13 June 1999

ECB pay price for empty premises

Scyld Berry

The England and Wales Cricket Board, faced with one of the least attractive Test series in recent memory, have begun to take measures to restrict the financial damage inflicted on the game by the failure of England to proceed beyond the first round of the World Cup.

For the first time Lancashire will be given control over their share of the promotion budget in order to market the Old Trafford Test against New Zealand in August and recover some of the ground lost by England's early exit. The first-class counties were originally promised a 15 per cent increase on last year's hand-out from the ECB, which has since been revised to five per cent - almost £1.5 million per county - and even that will take some marketing to achieve.

Normally the ECB's promotional budget of about a quarter of a million pounds is spent on a national campaign. This summer, for the first time, Lancashire will be given around £40,000 of it to promote the third Test between England and New Zealand on a local and regional basis.

The difficulties in selling such a fixture were highlighted in 1994, when the New Zealanders last toured England, and the Old Trafford Test attracted 41,857 spectators over five days. Sales were not exactly stimulated by the tourists' build-up to the match, which consisted of just holding Combined Universities to a draw then losing to Derbyshire by an innings.

Fancy dress which obstructed people's view was banned from last summer's Test against South Africa at Old Trafford, but anybody wearing a stitch is guaranteed a warm welcome when the third Test starts on August 5. So far only 30 per cent of tickets have been sold, according to Lancashire's chief executive Jim Cumbes, who says of England's World Cup: "It will have an effect."

Another handicap is that the Old Trafford Test this summer will coincide with the first day of the football league season, and although the fixtures have not yet been announced, a counter-attraction is sure to come from either Manchester United, the winners of everything, or Manchester City, newly promoted to the First Division. "I've often wondered about the impact of football," says Cumbes. "There's only so much money in anybody's pocket."

Upon realising the unappealing nature of this summer's Test cricket, the ECB decided during the winter to reduce prices from last season's level by 50 per cent for children and 25 per cent for adults for all four Test matches, and to charge only £6 for each child in a school party, and the same for adults attending after tea. At these rates the Lord's and Oval Tests will be almost sold out for the first four days - at a price to be borne by English cricket.

The ECB also missed out on a million pounds by staging some plum World Cup qualifying matches on county rather than Test grounds. There was a sound argument for taking one qualifying match to each of the 12 county grounds, if only so they would be forced to renovate some of their Victorian heritage. But if half-a-dozen of the most attractive ties had been staged on Test grounds, ticket sales could easily have been raised from £14 million to £15 million.

The World Cup song, released when England had already been eliminated, has been a comical disaster, as revealed in these pages. Replica shirt sales have been much more successful: at the latest count, 70,000 items have been sold. Indian, Pakistani and England shirts have sold most, followed by Australian and South African.

In the end this World Cup will make ends meet for English cricket and nothing more (if it had been the money-spinner originally envisaged, the official scorers for the matches would not have been unpaid volunteers). The organisers consistently claim it will be the most profitable World Cup ever, with £17m going to the International Cricket Council and around £12m to the ECB. But that is simply because the vastly lucrative 1987 and 1996 World Cups in Asia curiously made no official profits of any note. Hence ICC auditing from now on.

The ECB have also to assess the World Cup's impact on attendances at county cricket. It has no database to give any precise figures until mid-season, as counties send in their figures irregularly. Evidence from the counties themselves varies from Somerset, who claim to have had above average attendances for the Bath festival so far, to Kent, who claim to have had their "worst Tunbridge Wells in living memory" primarily because of the rain, secondly because of the World Cup. Their total attendance was 3,586 for the championship match against Surrey, and 1,749 for their National League match against Worcestershire.

Like England's performance, this World Cup has financially struggled to reach the level of average.

Source :: The Electronic Telegraph