{"id":307880,"date":"2025-08-01T00:22:09","date_gmt":"2025-08-01T00:22:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/307880\/"},"modified":"2025-08-01T00:22:09","modified_gmt":"2025-08-01T00:22:09","slug":"ecb-admits-no-evidence-hundred-has-attracted-new-fans-to-other-forms-of-cricket-the-hundred","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/307880\/","title":{"rendered":"ECB admits no evidence Hundred has attracted new fans to other forms of cricket | The Hundred"},"content":{"rendered":"

Richard Gould, the England and Wales Cricket<\/a> Board\u2019s chief executive, has admitted his organisation has no evidence that new fans attracted by the Hundred have gone on to attend other forms of the game. The ECB has long boasted that the tournament has attracted a different audience to existing formats.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Hundred is all about throwing cricket\u2019s doors open \u2013 and it\u2019s already delivering,\u201d the ECB\u2019s then chief executive, Tom Harrison, said after the first tournament in 2021. \u201cWe need to grow cricket, reach more people, and that\u2019s exactly what the Hundred does.\u201d<\/p>\n

A report published last October found that 31% of tickets for the Hundred have been bought by women, 23% were bought for juniors and 41% of buyers attended in family groups. But on the day counties received their first down payment on the windfall generated by external investment into the eight Hundred franchises<\/a> Gould said no work had been done into finding out if any of those new fans remain involved in the sport when the tournament is out of action.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s probably a bit of work we need to do,\u201d he said. \u201cJust to check that when people do come in, where do they go? Because you might get some coming in to Test cricket [who] then go to the Hundred and Hundred into Test cricket. We haven\u2019t done that work in any great detail.\u201d That lack of work is surprising given cross-pollination between formats is one of the ECB\u2019s primary goals.<\/p>\n

\u201cFandom is really important for us, whether it\u2019s England, Leicestershire or London Spirit,\u201d Gould said. \u201cThat\u2019s the key. We\u2019ve got a really dedicated core audience, which is relatively small compared to other sports. Then we\u2019ve got lots of people that are very interested in cricket, but perhaps don\u2019t come to it as often as we want.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe know the interest is there, we just need to get people to come more often for all formats, rather than just that \u2018I\u2019ve been to the Test once a year\u2019 type of thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s Hundred, which starts at Lord\u2019s on Tuesday, is likely to be the last before new owners start to push through significant changes, from team names and kits to the length of the format<\/a> itself. \u201cThat\u2019s the kind of conversation we\u2019re starting to get into now,\u201d said Vikram Banerjee, the tournament\u2019s managing director. \u201cIt would be slightly odd to bring all these great people in and then just leave it as it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

Deals for the sale of part or full stakes in six of the eight Hundred franchises were finalised this week, with the final two expected imminently. The total investment has been put at \u00a3520m<\/a>, of which an initial sum of \u201cjust north of \u00a3400,000\u201d has been released to every county. Host counties can expect to receive a minimum of \u00a318m and non-hosts around \u00a325m.<\/p>\n

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The possibility of adding a ninth team has already been discussed, but non-hosts have been warned against spending their windfalls on unnecessary stadium upgrades. \u201cWhen giving guidance as to what a future expansion team needs to look like in terms of facilities, we\u2019re not going to be setting huge capacities,\u201d Gould said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat we don\u2019t want is a load of empty plastic seats around the place. We\u2019re not looking to see investment going into creating white elephants.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Richard Gould, the England and Wales Cricket Board\u2019s chief executive, has admitted his organisation has no evidence that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307881,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4101],"tags":[1406,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-307880","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-cricket","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114950658161892336","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307880"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307880\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}