Friday, 5 July 2013

If You Market It...

Earlier this week, Martin Davies asked what we had learned from the first ODI between England and Pakistan, and concluded "not very much"!

Actually... I think there is something! (Although I am being very unfair to Martin, because he was talking in pure cricketing terms!)

We have learned that, as Kevin Costner didn't quite say:
If you market it, they will come!
The ODI in question was held during term-time... on a weekday... in Louth - a village in the middle of nowhere, with no railway station!

By any stretch, this should have been a recipe for commercial disaster - a one-man-and-his-dog show, played in a graveyard at midnight!

And yet... a crowd of 2,000 people turned up! On a weekday! In term-time! In the middle of nowhere!

[Er... that's enough exclamation marks, thanks - Ed.]

And the reason 2,000 people turned up was because Louth CC marketed the hell out of it.

(In contrast, the second ODI was played on a university sports field at Loughborough, with no marketing effort whatsoever, and the crowd was around 70*!)

So what we have learned from that first ODI at Louth is this:

If you market the heck out of a women's cricket match, there are people who will pay to see it. It doesn't happen by magic - it is hard work. But if you market it, they will come!

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* HT Raf Nicholson... who was one of the 70!

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