Having seen the news that Lancashire are putting its YouTube coverage of county championship matches behind a paywall, this saddens me greatly.
Firstly, I cannot see why Lancashire need to do this; it seems like a business decision more than anything. “Instead of making something free on an accessible platform such as YouTube, lets charge for it instead”. It’s not like the cost of living isn’t crippling people at the moment, is it?
I hope the other counties don’t follow suit, because that would be a travesty. I personally like to ‘dip in and out’ of the streams, watching one for a short time, then moving onto another. But once one county tries to profit from its stream, I can see others following, and then you’re losing a whole bunch of fans just because of greed.
English cricket has already been through this once, the 2005 Ashes, which is probably the best home series in most people’s living memory (unless you were there in 1981). This was the last series to be shown on free-to-air TV.
I have no problems with Sky or other paywall broadcasters buying the rights to show English cricket; the coverage is spot on, it just isn’t accessible to everyone, and you end up losing fans who can’t afford to watch.
County grounds are hardly jam-packed for championship games, and I can maybe see why Lancashire are trying to make a quick buck here, but they need to remember that they are a cricket club first and a business second. Attracting fans to either come in person or watch the live streams should be paramount.
Sussex, even though they are currently deep in financial trouble, gave free admission on the final two days of their recent championship match against Warwickshire. This is the sort of thing we need to see more of, not hiding our cricket away in these times of financial difficulties.
