Cricket NSW has proposed an opening-round Big Bash excursion to Hong Kong and even New Zealand as part of plans to expand the super-successful competition amid a boom of international interest in the Australian Twenty20 game.

Singapore and China have also been slated as target areas for Big Bash growth after the league's strongest regular season yet, which has boasted an average attendance of 30,534 ahead of this week's finals.

That figure puts the BBL in elite company on the list of international sporting leagues, narrowly ahead of the most recent Major League Baseball season in average attendance numbers albeit with the competition being played over a much shorter timeframe, and not far behind the AFL.

Last year Cricket NSW chief Andrew Jones sat down with members of his staff, Sydney Sixers boss Dom Remond and his Thunder counterpart Nick Cummins to discuss the possibility of dipping the BBL toe into the largely untapped south-east Asian market.

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The proposal was taken to Cricket Australia about three months ago and the national body will look at the idea more closely at the conclusion of this season's competition, which ends with the men's and women's grand finals on Saturday.

A Cricket Australia spokesperson said expanding the game in Australia either by lengthening the season or adding more teams was a higher priority than taking the game offshore, but Jones believed the two should go hand in hand.

"If and when Big Bash expands, the first stage of that would be to move to a full home and away season, rather than adding two teams straight away, which would give each team 14 games," Jones said.

"There's a question mark about whether the Australian market could accommodate that volume straight away if it's in a similar timeframe to what it is now. We thought with that, to help the market absorb the content, we could take either the first or the first two rounds overseas in early December.

"It's harder to get crowds before Christmas in Australia for obvious reasons, kids are at school and people are busy with end of year stuff."

Jones is proposing a blockbuster opening-round weekend involving all eight men's teams which would include a Friday night game, a double-header on Saturday and a fourth game on the Sunday. The Cricket NSW suggestion also hopes to include the eight women's teams.

Hong Kong hosted a Sixes cricket tournament for two decades up until 2012 before a lack of funding forced the competition to fold, although the Hong Kong Cricket Association announced last year that the league would return in 2017.

Cricket has established a strong presence in Hong Kong and the national team played in the last two Twenty20 World Cups, while the Sixers and Thunder both played practice matches against Hong Kong in the lead-up to this season's Big Bash.

Jones said south-east Asia offered significant growth potential for the Big Bash.

"The obvious locations would be Hong Kong, Singapore, possibly China – there's a cricket ground in Guangzhou," Jones said.

"It's a bit like starting the Tour De France in England or Ireland or Germany or Denmark as a way of globalising the brand. It starts to look and feel a lot like a Hong Kong [rugby union] Sevens type weekend targeted at a mix of ex-pats and locals. It's a good time zone for Australia and it's an emerging market for cricket.

"It's premium quality sport so I think you'd have to develop the market. There isn't a market until you take games there and when you take games there people say 'Wow, maybe this is something we enjoy'.

"It's no different to what Port Adelaide's doing in AFL, playing an AFL game in China."

Port Adelaide announced last year it would play an AFL match for premiership points against Gold Coast in Shanghai.The Sixers' men and women are both in action at the Gabba hoping to secure a place in the BBL grand finals.

The men take on the second-place Brisbane Heat, while the women are up against Hobart.