Perth Scorchers won their maiden Women’s Big Bash League (WBBL) title on Saturday at the Opus Stadium in Perth, Australia in presence of a standalone crowd of 15,511, the biggest in the history of WBBL.
The Finals of WBBL|07 which was just the third WBBL game at the Opus stadium saw a combined average audience of 535,000 tuning in across TV and streaming platforms, suppressing the previous highest 506,000 at the time of WBBL|04 Finals.
🏆Perth Scorchers beat Adelaide Strikers by 12 Runs🏆#WBBLFinal #WBBL2021 pic.twitter.com/hZTDpOKuEA
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) November 27, 2021
Organized amid the challenging period of Covid-19, WBBL went on to be a great success not just in terms of several record-breaking performances but also in terms of the viewership the league got which Cricket Australia on Sunday announced as the most-watched season ever with 5.36 million viewers tuning in across the tournament, a 15 percent increase on last season’s cumulative average audience
The Big Bash Leagues Chief, Alistair Dobson shared his view on the Finals with The Sydney Morning Herald, saying “It was an amazing night … an absolutely fitting finale,”
“You could see the passion of the Scorchers fans in the crowd. It meant so much and it was a fitting way to finish the competition.”
“It’s the No.1 cricket league in the world for women and if not the No.1 cricket league full stop. The hallmark of that is that the best players from around the world want to come and play.”
WBBL07 creates viewership records 😍 #WBBL07 @WBBL pic.twitter.com/dIIy6h1pN8
— Female Cricket (@imfemalecricket) November 28, 2021
In addition to this, Dobson also talked about the high broadcasting numbers which in his opinion, indicates a good distribution of talent across the WBBL teams and the depth of women’s cricket around the world.
“Each team is full of superstars from the top right to the bottom.”, he said.
Commenting on the next step after achieving such great popularity, Dobson told, “I think that leads us to the next stage which is trying to build a few more blockbuster propositions into the schedule, whether that is Thursday or Friday night games and trying to build on those big marquee spots through the competition,”
“We’ve been historically focused on weekends – and they remain a big part of the schedule – but I think an opportunity to create some of those big blockbuster matches, perhaps even in some of the big stadiums that we started to try this year, is a focus,” he further added.
The stats for the seventh edition of WBBL are a positive sign for women’s cricket especially with the World Cup coming next year. It indicates how women’s cricket has started getting a lot of recognition and is on its way to equal or even go past the popularity of men’s cricket someday.
Loves all things female cricket
