The age of innocence and marketing

Anyone with an interest in Australian sport, not just cricket, will be digesting the detail of the government-commissioned Crawford Report which was handed down yesterday. Basically, in a very simplistic summary, the report attempts to prioritise where the limited pool of government funding should go. Some Olympic sports - the niche ones that don’t attract many participants or win medals - will probably see a cut in funding while other popular sports (like cricket), which enjoys huge participation, should continue to receive generous funding.

As a cricket fan, with young children on the verge of entering the system, the Crawford Report’s probable bias towards cricket is likely to benefit my own selfish ends. My oldest child, aged six, has just begun his cricket career for the Ferny Fireballs under-eight team and will no doubt benefit from continued grassroots investment. His passion for the game is unbelievable – broken light bulbs, damaged walls and a room full of cricket posters attest to the reach of the clever marketers who are charged with the task of seeding the next generation of young Australian cricket fans. “Good on ‘em” I say. I can think of nothing better than a cricket-crazy household, just to ensure that my wife can't change the TV channel without a howl of protest!

What will be interesting to see is whether the funding is truly directed to the grassroots of the sport or whether it ends up being siphoned towards the elite end of the pyramid. A sport like cricket already has far too much money at the top of the tree and I’m hoping that the Australian government will go to great lengths to ensure that the lion’s share of the funding is directed at young kids. Sponsors and TV rights will keep the big boys in champagne and caviar for some time to come, but the real battlefront in a country like Australia, where cricket competes ferociously with so many other sports, is to win the loyalty of the juniors.

It’s never going to be an issue in the subcontinent; cricket is likely to be No. 1 for many years to come and it’s unlikely to be threatened by any other sport. If Australia is to remain competitive in this market, it is essential that the juniors, young boys and girls exactly like my children, are afforded the facilities, infrastructure and coaching that attempts to bridge the vast gulf in the sheer passion for the game in South Asia. We’ll never match the unbridled love of the game that I’ve seen en masse on the maidans in Mumbai or the laneways of Colombo, but if there’s no money invested in grassroots cricket, that gap will continue to widen.

Australian cricket is generally run efficiently with innovative marketing campaigns and a good structure to encourage participation in those early years. Initiatives like the All Stars versus the Australian XI game this Sunday are clearly aimed at getting young people interested in following the national team. Personally, I don’t much care for the manufactured glitz, music and hype that these sort of joke games seem to specialise in but that is not the point. The marketing men are not trying to woo people like me. They are targeting young families, women and potential fans who need convincing that the ‘product’ is exciting enough to compete for their entertainment dollar. That’s what the sponsors want – bang for their buck to allow them to keep investing in the sport. Fair enough, too.

Nonetheless, I thought it was in poor taste to receive marketing communication, aimed at my six-year old, promoting the All Stars Game to this audience with a very overt advertising message from the main sponsor, a prominent Scotch whisky brand. My son is just about at the age when anything connected to cricket is processed through adoring eyes. His questions last night left me in no doubt that he was trying to make sense of this brand placement. Fortunately, he is young enough to believe white lies but it won’t be long before he understands that Australian cricket is underpinned by two strong brands that sell beer and whisky. That is the reality of the modern game - rich players and comfortable administrators have every reason to be happy with this relationship but it does them no credit to (perhaps unthinkingly and without malice) be so clumsy with their promotional campaigns.

I just hope that the Crawford Report takes these factors into account when deciding how that money is to be spent in cricket. If it's spent at the local club level, helping tireless volunteers like the Club President to run a junior club on the smell of an oily rag, it will be money well spent. I’m ever-so-slightly uneasy though about government funds being spent at the top tier of a sport that so overtly sleeps with brewers and distillers while the very same government is pouring billions of dollars into trying to patch up the damage to a society that is being torn apart by drugs and alcohol. When those marketing messages invade my child’s domain, disguised as a promotion for something he loves so dearly (cricket), it makes me wonder if we’ve got the balance quite right. He'll grow up soon enough. Too soon. Can we just hold on to his innocence for a few more years please?