Allrounder says officials can get "really inventive" with domestic competitions if international cricket isn’t possible this season
WBBL can play key role is saving the summer: Perry
Star allrounder Ellyse Perry says the Rebel Women’s Big Bash League can play a major role lifting Australian cricket out of the coronavirus shutdown as the game tries to build a new season summer schedule while facing greater financial pressure than ever before.
Having revealed that cricket could run out of money by August unless budgetary cuts are made, Cricket Australia is working through numerous scenarios to ensure India’s men’s team can tour this summer, which would inject hundreds of millions of dollars of vital funds back into the game through lucrative broadcast deals.
With all sports experiencing financial hardship due to the global health pandemic, it’s unclear exactly what role cricket’s other series and competitions – including the Big Bash and women’s internationals - will play this summer with the need to recoup financial losses.
But if international travel restrictions remain in place and visiting teams are unable to tour, Perry says it will create an opportunity for officials to be “really inventive” and for domestic competitions to take centre stage.
And she says the WBBL, which could well be the first cricket played this summer if the ban on overseas travel continues, is a strong enough competition to help fill the gap.
"Potentially the WBBL will play a key role there because it might be the first bit of cricket we see back on TV … because it’s at the start of the summer," Perry told cricket.com.au on the day it was confirmed she will stay with Sydney Sixers for a further two seasons.
"It doesn’t look like it will be particularly feasible for many international sporting teams to be able to travel to Australia in the near future, so I guess that puts a real spotlight on what we can do with the domestic products that we’ve got.
"The WBBL and the BBL are the biggest in terms of revenue and fan engagement and broadcast deals, but it might be that we have to pay more attention and use some of our other domestic products as a means of keeping cricket on the TV and hopefully generating some more revenue.
"I certainly don’t profess to understand many of the revenue streams to their full extent, and obviously India (coming to Australia) and some of those series are really pivotal in that.
"Certainly revenue and the health of the game financially is paramount to it continuing to exist and that’s true in any sport.
"But at the same time, I think the opportunity it presents is really interesting, too."
The WBBL moved to a standalone season last summer with strong viewing numbers across the 23 matches broadcast on Channel 7 and Foxtel – with the remaining 36 games streamed on cricket.com.au – while the T20 World Cup final proved an overwhelming success as 1.23m Australians tuned in to the TV coverage in addition to the record-breaking 86,174 crowd at the MCG.
While conceding her expectations of continued growth in the women’s game may need to be tempered by the uncertainty caused by the virus, Perry is convinced that the sport – particularly the WBBL – is capable of building on the gains made from the historic World Cup final just last month, saying the success of that tournament will be felt in cricket for decades to come regardless of what happens this summer.
"You always want to build on progress and you never want to go backwards," she said.
"We’ve set a pretty high bar now with that, but no one’s going to forget that overnight. There was 86,000 people at the ground that night and they hopefully all had an amazing time and there were also hundreds of thousands who tuned in to watch, if not millions.
"I think it’s about re-igniting that and I think we’re very, very fortunate that we’ve got the WBBL up and running and not just for a couple of years, but for five years now.
"It’s a really strong and stable competition and the more we can get people engaging with that, certainly the success of the World T20 gives us an opportunity to do that.
"I don’t think we’re really at too much risk of losing that momentum, but I think as best we can we’d love to harness that and keep everything growing and developing at a rapid rate.
"But maybe that has to be a bit more realistic given all the circumstances now."