Counties Fretting Over Fall in Twenty20 Cup Ticket Sales

Barely has the brand leader, the IPL, shuffled off its South African stage suffering from a combination of second-season blues and homesickness than Twenty20 today takes over the domestic cricket program with many counties more than a little twitchy about the likely financial windfall this season. While no one has actually heard the popping of bubbles, county chief executives are reported advanced sales down by as much as 40 per cent.

According to the ECB the "all-singing, all-dancing Twenty20 Cup is back with a bang", eight fixtures being played today in a new format which sees the tournament split into four stages before the finals at Edgbaston on August 15. The board promises all sorts of enticements, particularly the £2.7million retractable floodlights at Lord's which will be used on Wednesday when the holders ,the Middlesex Panthers (note the name change) play the Kent Spitfires, but across the counties there is a worry that a tournament breathed new life into cricket is in danger of running out of puff.

Test cricket was given a decent jolt by the number of seats which remained empty at Chester-le-Street and Gloucestershire had to employ a buy-one-get-one-free deal to shift all the tickets for yesterday's one-day international at Bristol, and many counties are clinging to promises of increased sales for the later stages of the Twenty20 Cup.

As for now they point out that the tournament's earlier start has put them in direct competition with the tail end of the football season while cash-strapped punters are either saving their money for the Twenty20 World Cup which is only ten days away or the Ashes which is now less than seven weeks off.

The ECB admits to being concerned, but its head of marketing, Will Collinson says he is "confident that once the tournament starts, the number of people who watch the cricket over the course of the year will increase significantly." Others are less sure and question whether the tournament has been sold hard enough and whether enough people know that it starts today.

After six years of almost unbridled success there are those like David Harker, Durham's chief executive, who also think "we've missed a trick in England. It was invented to attract people into the grounds, but we seem to have spent the last few years apologising because it's not 'proper cricket'. It is a sporting entertainment package in its own right. You just have to differentiate that from the longer form of the game."

Whether it is the credit crunch, unsettled weather or an overcrowded cricket calendar, the situation is about to get worse. Next year sees the start of a two-divisional Twenty20 league scheduled in place of the Pro40 which means two Twenty20 tournaments in quick succession.

"I do have a concern about overkill," says Mark Newton, the Worcestershire chief executive, who speaks for several of his colleagues. "I just don't know whether that concern is right or wrong. But if things don't work out, we'll have no one to blame but ourselves because we recommended the second competition."

No so abroad though. Lalit Modi, the Indian Premier League commissioner, has already revealed tentative plans to take the tournament abroad again after its current outing in South Africa.

Modi, who was forced to hastily rearrange this year's event after security concerns in India, seems to be ignoring the empty seats of the last six weeks and says he is thinking of holding two IPL tournaments a year, one in India and one in an "untapped market". America, he says "throws up challenges", but he has not ruled out England - yet.