Gimmickry can help county cricket too

Gimmickry can help county cricket too

Rich Clarke
CricketPaper


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As you might expect, ‘legacy fans’ have been compiling a long list of grievances since The Hundred began. For those who have bitten the bullet and actually watched a game or two, the gimmickry seems to be a tipping point. Whether it is the persistent intrusion of the DJ, the graphics scrawled on the scoreboard or the umpires holding up white cards to indicate a ‘five’, they feel it all detracts from the game.

This is wrong-headed because the competition is designed to be sport as entertainment and, in this area, one fan’s gimmickry is another’s selling point. At least when it is packaged up and marketed as a ‘matchday experience’ complete with dirt-cheap tickets, foam pointy finger and all the crisps cram down your throat inside two-and-a-half hours.

I have seen this process close up. My career in content strategy started with 13 years at one of England’s most historic football clubs. But my next stop was a Major League Soccer outfit in the smallest American city containing teams in the five big sports. I knew I had to call football a different name. But there was so much to learn about the content, communications and marketing required to bring fans to the stadium when they had no deep roots in the game.

Our season ran from March to October with the possibility of going further if we made the playoffs. Whatever the results, we struggled to shift tickets at the extremities of the season but would sell out between Memorial Day and Labor Day, basically May to September. This was because the games were a cheap, fun night out on hot summer evenings and, during that period, the only elite sporting alternative in the city was baseball and that was an old, slow game for old slow people. Sound familiar?

We produced our fair share of gimmicks – Military Appreciation Night, Star Wars Night and, yes, Fish Taco Night. We requested a home game every July 4 and, afterwards, a sell-out crowd would sit on the pitch to watch the State’s biggest firework display. There were always tailgate barbeques, funfairs and bands playing in the car parks before the game. This ‘experience’ attracted the crowd as much as the soccer.

Hopefully, my current cricketing position is now clear – anti-Hundred but pro-change with equal ferocity. The gimmickry in US soccer had no real tradition or structure to protect, that is not the case in our national sport.

So the question for my rare breed of digital native and middle-aged county cricket badger is how we should tweak the traditional game to open it up a new audience or at least double down on the current one. The marketers will want to make the most of hugely popular live streams so expect to have to log-in, share some data and suffer a few more adverts. However, this pivotal product needs careful nurturing not pip squeezing. MLS had a central content hub to assist creators at clubs. The Customer Relationship Management function, aka the sales data crunching, was also done at HQ in New York. Surely there are economies of scale in centralised production and data capture capabilities for the streams which allows the counties to spend their money augmenting and personalising coverage.

Before the Hundred started, the Blast was the main repository for county cricket’s gimmicks. It was more popular than ever, with Finals Day fast following the PDC World Darts Championships in becoming a fun, beery smash hit capable of selling out for next year just days after the current one had concluded. The help is needed elsewhere.

I’d like to see county grounds equipped with fully-functioning wireless able to stream live video via a club or ECB app. The Royal London Cup could have its innings break extended to ensure children can properly play on the outfield. For many youngsters, it is the highlight of their visit so let’s actively sell it that way during the summer holidays. MLS was excellent in getting as many children on the pitch as possible but they used their stars more effectively. There was a ‘high-five’ guard of honour as the teams came out and every player went to pitchside ‘selfie stations’ after the game.

And, here’s a little idea that might solve the problem of the Bob Willis Trophy, which appears to have all the pointlessness of the Community Shield, only at the end of the campaign.

For the past few years, the NHL have put on an outdoor ice hockey game each season. This League fixture is taken around to unusual venues, like frozen lakes in the forest or town parks, and they used retro uniforms.

Let’s tour the Bob Willis Trophy final around our best outgrounds – Arundel, Scarborough, Sedbergh – and see the best two teams battle in out in old-fashioned whites, dining on traditional teas and umpired by two people in white frock coats. Make it an event as much as a game.

Quite understandably, The Hundred has used gimmicks to entice a new audience into its version of cricket. Why not consider using a similar approach to sympathetically shine a light on the version of cricket many fear it could destroy?

Other things I would do:

  • Rivalry Week - A round of games for all the derbies, or as many as possible

  • A trophy at stake between local rivals, based on all-competition record. Essex and Kent already do this.

  • Annual find-a-commentator competition in state schools - too many white, male public school voices. Distribute the best one around the RL50 games in the holidays

  • Video - curate oddities and funnies from the live feeds to create a different type of compilations in the style of Robelinda2, a fan-created YouTube channel with 900,000 subscribers. These could be distributed on social media or be part of a weekly show.

  • RL50 games - selfie stations, specific activities for 8-11yo and 12-14yo age age groups, link up with junior sections of clubs

* This article first appeared in The Cricket Paper, get it every Sunday or subscribe here

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