Even so, a rise of nearly 5000 spectators per game and the place in the global top 10 to date this season is another representation of the fast emerging success of the BBL.

By contrast, the world's biggest league, the NFL, drew in excess of 17 million fans to its stadiums in the 2015 regular season. Major League Baseball comes in seventh with an average of 30,517 but with teams playing 162 games a season had a total attendance of more than 73 million.

The BBL clearly has a far smaller sample size than other competitions that fill spots inside and around the top 10. There were only 24 games played before Sunday's two matches between Hobart and Perth, and Sydney Sixers and Brisbane with a total attendance of nearly 700,000.

The late-season average of 28,279 before Sunday's two games has propelled the BBL to ninth position on the list of the world's most attended sports leagues, nudging ahead of Japan's professional baseball league (28,248) and Indian Super League football (26,376) and ensuring the Canadian Football League (24,737) and Italy's Serie A (23,001) are absent from the top 10.

"That's flattering, given that the competition is only five years' old, to be in the company of some of those really established sports leagues," Big Bash manager Anthony Everard said on Sunday. "Having said that it's obviously not really our focus. Our focus is on our own backyard and making sure we continue to appeal to kids and families. That is as satisfying to us as perhaps some of those big numbers on a global scale."

The Big Bash figures are obviously improved by the massive crowd at the MCG.

"I think that number has been a real eye-opener for us," Everard said. "If I reflect on the first few years of the Big Bash we were astounded by mid-20,000s and I think we had 30,000 at the Gabba one night. Those were considered at the time to be fantastic numbers.

"Here we are eight or 10 days after that MCG game and we're still trying to get our heads around 80,00 fans at a Big Bash game. It gives us a real cause to reconsider where the opportunities are for the BBL and the growth available not just for Melbourne but all the other markets as well.

"We've stated that at the end of the season we're going to consider our options. I guess we sort of think of it as growth rather than expansion and it can take many different forms.