Surrey break £1million barrier
Will Luke
25-Feb-2013
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The fear that Surrey may not be eligible for the inaugural Champions League may continue, but that hasn't stopped the club enjoying a profitable start to their Twenty20 Cup campaign, writes Patrick Kidd in The Times.
Last night's match against Kent at the Brit Oval, which was attended by the Prince of Wales and the Duchess of Cornwall, was watched by a capacity crowd of 23,000 and the county announced yesterday that ticket sales for their five home matches had now brought in more than £1million.
This is the first time that Surrey's ticket sales have broken the million-pound barrier, helped by there being five matches at home rather than four. “It's massive and the impact is much wider,” Paul Blanchard, Surrey's sales and marketing director, said. “Not just in terms of secondary spend, such as at the bar or in the shop, but in getting a different sort of cricket-watcher coming. The long-term knock-on benefit of that is hard to calculate.
But for all Surrey's financial success, the same cannot be said of other counties. Over in The Guardian David Hopps expresses his concerns, and those of several clubs, who are concerned at potential overkill:
It is too early to draw firm conclusions but the word being whispered around the counties is "overkill". County Twenty20 has expanded again this year and the lack of sell-out crowds suggests that it might have overstretched itself.
This year, county Twenty20 involves three groups of six, demanding that each county play 10 games - five home and five away - in a maximum of 18 days. Yorkshire have played two home matches on successive nights and the least attractive, against Derbyshire on Thursday, drew only 5,000. If one of the bigger grounds cannot even achieve last season's average of 7,000 then there is cause for concern.
Lancashire's first home game is against Leicestershire at Old Trafford tomorrow, and Jim Cumbes, their chief executive, conceded: "We have five home games in eight days. People are bound to pick and choose. There are a lot of entertainment choices around here and there is a recession on. There is only so much money to go round."
Will Luke is assistant editor of ESPNcricinfo