Arthur Crabtree wrote:£70 at Trent Bridge.
The loss of the weekend as the core of the match complicates pricing.
Ticket prices hugely effects the crowd. £70 wipes out a huge amount of the potential audience.
I think there was a swell of feelgood support centred around the Fletcher years, and the re-emergence of an exciting, winning team that struck off decades of bad results, home and away. And that period wore the ticket prices fairly lightly and built up support through C4 coverage. But the last four years of attritional cricket, the eight years loss of the game to Sky and the current bad feeling surrounding the post Ashes period has soured the mood. Sending us back to the crowds we see on VHS when English cricket was a joke.
Recovery will be difficult. There was always potential for the game to reconnect with the public when it was on terrestrial tv. Less certain now. Participation in supporting the England team live over the past few years has felt a bit like subscribing to watching it on tv. You join it at a point where it just about feels affordable, but each year it grows in expense, and each year that loyalty is stretched further. In an economic slump, more people will have to say no.
very true - the ticket prices are a major problem. I'm taking my other half, my parents and 5 kids to the women'd test match and it'll cost £50 for the day with free parking and lots of kids activities thrown in.
for a mens test match it would cost more than that per ticket and there's nothing much for the kids - and I'm not going to fork out about £700 to take the family to a day at the test!
