Enough time has passed in the 2024-25 Big Bash League to analyse the performance of the competition. From crowd numbers to city performances here’s how the BBL is doing and what we should expect the future of the league to be.
The average attendance for the Big Bash League in 2024-2025 is 22,316.
Cities such as Perth and Adelaide have continued to embrace the competition. 61.44 per cent of Perth Stadium and 56.31 per cent of Adelaide Oval have been full during games. For a domestic competition that is really strong numbers.
Perth has a history of embracing its domestic teams such as the Perth Wildcats in the National Basketball League. Simply the gap between east and west sees a very devoted population to their city and that’s reflected in the attendance. For Adelaide having only one Big Bash team and being a cricket-dominated city sees such strong performances.
Another aspect is the success and continuity of these teams. For years the Strikers had key players that played in blue edition after edition. Matt Short, Rashid Khan, and Jonathan Wells all played around 70 games whilst Jake Weatherald remains with Adelaide.
Perth has a similar story with Turner, Tye, Behrendorff and Agar all nearly playing 100 games. The success of the Scorchers with five BBL titles sees them as the league’s most successful club as well. Both these factors have seen a great level of loyal fans not seen on the East Coast.
The Sydney Sixers also have had that level of success with three titles and a consistency in their roster. However, the attendance in both Sydney and Melbourne is significantly lower. Simply having two teams for a league struggling to garner attention has hurt the big cities.
The Melbourne Stars and Melbourne Renegades have had some many players overlap that the teams feel disconnected. The other main issue is the amount of sport available to fans in these cities. Major international events in Melbourne such as the Australian Open, Formula 1 and Melbourne Cup see a certain disregard for the BBL unless you are a major cricket fan or a family wanting to have an evening’s entertainment.
Unfortunately, you cannot dissolve two BBL teams this far into the league’s development it simply wouldn’t be practical.
Shorter seasons have already been implemented to try and not oversaturate the amount of cricket.
The best tweak to be made to improve the league further would be much longer contracts for big-name Australian players. Glenn Maxwell and Jake Fraser-McGurk being signed to long-term deals to stay with their respective clubs would do Melbourne and Sydney teams a lot of good.
The Big Bash isn’t in the same crisis mode it was a few years ago but it will never return to its former glory. The purpose of the competition should be to promote cricket and if it can do that by bringing young fans through the gate then we should all be content.
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