With sell-out games and eye-catching spectacles, the Oval is making good on its slogan ‘the home of T20 cricket.’ SportsPro spoke to key staff at the cricket ground to find out what keeps fans flocking to domestic T20 games.

With a first-ever World Cup win in the bag and an Ashes summer lasting until mid-September, it has probably never been a better time to be an England cricket fan. But while interest has been piqued in the international game, county clubs continue to face the challenge of getting bums on seats over the course of a domestic season.

With different formats lasting from a few hours to a few days taking place over a period of more than five months, there is not a dearth of choice. But clubs have continued to post modest attendances. In 2018, the County Championship’s total attendance figures were approximately 600,000 and the 50-over One Day Cup fared markedly less well with 180,000. Concerns over the appetite, and relevance, of country cricket have been circling for years.

Bucking the trend is the domestic T20 Blast. Now in its 17th season, its appeal to both the cricket fan and the everyman has made it the biggest earner for clubs at domestic level. Last year, it set a new attendance record of 931,000, with the one million barrier expected to be broken in the 2019 edition.

One cricket ground at the forefront of Twenty20 (T20) is the Oval. Home to Surrey County Cricket Club, the venue’s blend of cricketing tradition and a modern party atmosphere has justified its self-described labelling as ‘the home of T20 cricket’. This year, it expects to sell out six of its seven games, pulling in a crowd of more than 25,000 nearly every match.

To find out more, SportsPro went behind the scenes at the Oval to discover what goes into hosting its successful T20 formula.

Surrey CCC's T20 Blast games have drawn sell-out crowds of more than 25,000

Sticking to the strategy

Emily Clark, head of marketing: “Someone who comes to a T20 will likely be very different to someone who comes to a Test match. That means our marketing strategy has to be different. We focus on data capture and now have a database of 650,000. Without that, we can’t be as intelligent or implement effective marketing strategies.

“We look at data from previous fixtures going back to when T20 first started in 2003 and see who came to those games, then we create lookalike audiences off that. If there’s a specific demographic coming to T20s we then create our strategies off the back of that. Everything is data driven. We won’t just blanket market across London.”

Jon Surtees, head of communications, content and community: “Our slogan ‘the home of T20 cricket’, which plays off Lord’s’ ‘home of cricket’ has been really effective. It’s about getting the message out there, media interest in these events is actually pretty limited due to the amount of other cricket going on.”

George Hampson, head of corporate sales: “We’ve found that selling T20 is easier than international cricket. The timings work well for people to come and watch. You can leave work, get here in time for the start of the game and you’re home by 10pm. It’s a simple concept but one that is very appealing.”

Alex Lewis, general manager: “We try to make ourselves different from the formality many often associate with cricket. Everything from the music and entertainment to the concessions and bars, even to the way staff dress and act is all done purposefully to differentiate ourselves.”

Charlie Hodgson, managing director: “Our strategy is pretty simple.

“We don’t want to have to find a new audience every single T20 game.

“We’re not blessed with masses amounts of space around the ground to do lots of other stuff so we make good cricket the focus and everything stems from that.”

The ground has made efforts to attract new and non-cricketing fans to matches

Packing the ground

Hodgson: “This year, we’ve focused a lot more on group bookings. More than half of our bookings are for groups of six or more, including families with young children. Tickets are a quid for a quid and usually sell-out every game.

“From a sales side, we’ve been much more proactive. We know where group bookings came from geographically and then will advertise in those areas, send tailored emails and get people on the phone to call people up who’ve been before and ask if they’d like to come along again. It’s not cold calling, it’s people who’ve have a relationship with the club, so we position it as a service where we help do the booking for them and take out the hassle.”

Surtees: “Every year, approximately 65 per cent of ticket sales are to people who aren’t on our database and we have to assume they are new to cricket and new to the Kia Oval. We try to make sure we can offer a good game and have an in-depth experience for people who know and love cricket, while also ensuring those new to the sport can came here for a good evening’s entertainment.”

Clark: “We do a mixture of outdoor advertising, digital advertising and paid spending in publications like Time Out and City AM. With digital advertising, we can be really specific with our demographics and the messaging.

“We know people who come to T20 cricket here tend to live up to 18 miles away and know whereabouts they work so we can advertise near their office block or on the train line they commute in from. It’s not efficient just to blanket market.

“This year, we have seven home T20 fixtures and six of those are set to sell out.”

Hampson: “Corporate in particular is a big opportunity for us because it is attractive to a much wider net of people. You’re looking at UK£200 (US$243) per person rather than UK£600 (US$730) to UK£700 (US$851) which we get for Test matches.

“We get quite a lot of T20 hospitality bookings for 40, 60 or 80 people. Our hospitality sales for T20 are increasing whereas for international games they tend to stay the same.”

Lewis: “The mix of the clientele is also quite different, it’s not just loyal cricket fans. For many who come along, the cricket isn’t the only factor. The Kia Oval has a reputation when it comes to T20s; you can come along and have a laugh no matter how invested you are in the game.”

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Preparing for action

Hodgson: “T20 games have their own challenges. You can get more than 25,000 people turning up to the ground between 6pm and 6.30pm which puts stress on infrastructure, so we try to minimise the time it takes to get into the ground and not have their experience compromised.

“We invest a lot of time and effort into all that, be it the quality of the catering, the speed of the queues, the welcome they get or how easily they can find their seat. A domestic T20 now has the feel of an international game. The ground changes completely.”

Surtees: “A T20 is a very short game so there is a lot of intensity compared to a Test match and for a First Class game you’re looking at an attendance of 3,500 people. A lot of effort goes in to a few hours.

“With the English Cricket Board (ECB) salary cap, we can only invest a certain amount of those profits on the field so the rest go back into other areas of the club to make the Kia Oval one of the best cricket grounds in the world.”

Clark: “We don’t just try to make sure people have got a ticket, we look at where they’ve sat before and segment the data. If we’ve only got 2,000 tickets left and they’re all in the Peter May stand, we’ll contact the people who’ve sat there before and tell them we’re letting them know first the tickets are selling out.”

Hampson: “The challenge for us is the condensed window. You only have a few hours to maximise earnings on the day. Our sales are strong though, so we’re getting used to London descending on the ground and that puts us in a strong position to cope and make the most of it.”

Lewis: “I heard someone describe putting on a T20 as like turning a cricket ground into a football stadium. Regardless of your views on that, it is definitely a totally different kind of experience altogether.”

Game time

Hodgson: “Our family zone has lots going on during the match to keep everyone entertained. It’s sponsored by Xbox and has taken over the whole of the OCS Stand which was previously a hospitality area. It’s full of Xbox consoles, cricket games and coaching as well, so it’s incredible value.

Surtees: “For T20, one of the key focuses for us is the production side. We found out that people were having a much better time at televised games because there was a lot more production and a sense of occasion. At non-televised games we didn’t have multiple cameras covering the action, highlights or pyrotechnics.

“We’ve now really made an effort to invest in the experience at non-televised games. If you came to a game now, you necessarily wouldn’t know if it was on TV or not.”

Hampson: “Some people come to a T20 because we’ve sold them the idea of spending an evening on a roof terrace in London with a barbeque and a drink, with sport in the background. It means we can sell T20 cricket to anyone. The terraces adds a different experience. For many, it offers far better value financially and entertainment-wise compared to other events.

Lewis: “If you look at the sales for our game against Middlesex on 23rd July, across our bars we took approximately UK£92,000 (US$111,200) in the hour before the game started. When you compare that to a whole day of an Ashes Test match we do UK£400,000 (US$487,000). In an hour of a county T20 game we do nearly a quarter of that, so it gives you an idea that it’s a different beast.”

Major investment has been made to improve the spectacle of T20 Blast games

Coming back for more

Hodgson: “We keep an eye on what other venues and sports are doing. Customer experience is constantly evolving and we try to stay on top of that so they know they’ll be in for a good experience if they come back.

“As well as fans, we’re also mindful of revenue opportunities. The County Championship and domestic 50-over games can’t compete with T20. The same goes for value for sponsors. Their brand will be seen by a packed stadium and on TV a lot of the time. That’s where the biggest value for the domestic county game is when it comes to revenue.”

Surtees: “We work with Two Circles, the sports marketing agency, and have detailed fan feedback which gets sent to everyone that buys tickets here. We’re driven by that feedback and data.

“From a production point of view, we’re selling tickets in one of the most competitive entertainment markets in the world here in London. We can’t sit still, we have to keep looking at ways at how to improve people’s experience. We try to find the right balance between hardcore cricket fans who don’t want to be spoon-fed and those who may never have been before.”

Clark: “Inevitably, our approach with data means our marketing strategy takes more time, but we’d much rather take the time and do that because it’s a much more effective way of getting people into the ground and finding out how we can continue to get them to watch T20s here.

Hampson: “We’re fortunate we get a bigger spectrum of clients but we never stop trying to add value to our product. It’s difficult in London to find a full hospitality package, whether it’s sport, music or another form of entertainment, for our kind of price.”