Hard News: Unscripted Drama
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"At a guess, the Board of Control for Cricket in India misread the market and insisted on the higher price"
Don't know about that. Basin prices were lifted to $45 against England last year, along with the scrapping of free entry in the last hour of play, or any discount for afternoon attendance, and I thought it was because it was England, but sure enough it's the standard price now - it was applied for the match against the West Indies.
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I generally loathe organised sports but the one thing sporting I did really enjoy was attending test cricket at eden park and the occasional one day match, that was until they got rid of the terraces and made attending a expensive and bloody horrid affair (bad service, OTT security et al)
I must go to Hamilton or Napier one day to watch a game and relive what can be a really enjoyable day out whether you're a fan or not
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What Gio said. England test was so freakin expensive. I'll definitely be going to at least some of the upcoming test but I can't help but think it would be more enjoyable if people in their early twenties with spare time (but not so much spare cash) could be piling in at say $10 a session $15 a day or something. Surely almost all the money comes from TV rights, and surely the TV looks better when there is a lot of people there?
But minor grumbles about what has been an amazing summer for us long suffering black caps fans.
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I do love cricket when it's an actual contest, the suspense and slow drama is something to see. Even if it's on television.
I wonder what the equilibrium between price and attendance is. If the cost of an event was closer to a movie ticket, I'm sure the stands would be fuller. Though that probably wouldn't help the Sevens, which now have a collection of problems.
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Also, a note on the Sevens. I hate the sevens, I hate Wellington during the Sevens. It is absolutely not my thing. BUT! Lot's of people love it, it's a big crazy party and I think we need to do more to cater to the drunken mob as opposed to just complaining every year.
TPF have a played a few European city wide festivals. One show in Gent was a mass booze fests with hundreds of thousands of people descending into a smallish city for 48 hours. The level of drunkness is comparable to the 7s but there is something more in control. There are urinals, portaloos set up everywhere. Lots of food vendors everywhere. Lots of police, but just hanging back. Observing the chaos and not intervening all that much. Mind you, there also seems to be a lot more weed being publicly consumed at these things, that might help.
Maybe I had rose (booze) tinted view of it, but I feel like we could do a lot more to make the 7s a city wide event where the drunk madness is somehow controlled but accepted.
Equal rights for extremely boozed people now!
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Taking one thing you said and then rambling on where my brain went with it: Ultra HD is great for all sport, slo-mo not so much. Rugby for example, I feel, doesn't need slo-motion replays. There's barely time for them any way. Football (the round ball version) is another where a slo-mo shot, say of a header, results in some ugly scenes.
However, I find it amusing that cricket, one of the slowest and most boring of sports, looks amazing when slowed down even more in HD ultra-slo-mo.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Don’t know about that. Basin prices were lifted to $45 against England last year, along with the scrapping of free entry in the last hour of play, or any discount for afternoon attendance, and I thought it was because it was England, but sure enough it’s the standard price now – it was applied for the match against the West Indies.
Ah. I see. The scrapping of the free last hour and afternoon discounts seems particularly counterproductive. Most people can't spare a whole weekday to attend the match, but a reasonable offer would see a lot more people come to the ground for the last session. The way walk-up crowds are disincentivised now seems particularly counterproductive.
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I agree, there is nothing like Test Match Cricket. Only the English could devise a game that can last for nearly a week and still have no result at the end.The subtlety and changes in tempo of Test Cricket are unlike anything else in sport.
There was a lot of talk about McCullum not enforcing the follow-on. I'd been thinking about it the previous evening and think he was dead right to try and bat India out of the game. There was plenty of time for India's batsmen to settle in and give NZ a target (a la the Windies in Dunedin in December) that might prove challenging. Thank Cliff it all came right in the end.
One downer for someone following Sunday's play from the golf course: why is the cricinfo feed of the game delayed by half an hour? What is the court injunction that is mentioned?
On your comment about reality TV; I loathe it as a rule, but what is with all the shitty Australian crap on our screens at the moment? Is it cheap? A result of CER? Terrible, all of it, but if I had to see reality TV on our screens it should feature NZers boring the crap out of people, not Aussies.
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giovanni tiso, in reply to
Most people can't spare a whole weekday to attend the match
Especially if you have kids. Taking my 11 year old to see half the game's play on the Sunday against England last year set me back $30.
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Unfortunately, BBC Worldwide has taken down from YouTube the copies of last week’s Panorama programme, Putin’s Games
It is still available on the BBC iPlayer: http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03t8dm9/Panorama_Putins_Games/
Possibly not readily accessible if you're outside the UK, unless you're tech-savvy enough to sidestep those sorts of boundaries. Not that I suggest you should, of course.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
One downer for someone following Sunday’s play from the golf course: why is the cricinfo feed of the game delayed by half an hour? What is the court injunction that is mentioned?
That would be a total screw-up in which NZ Cricket is complicit:
Multi-Screen Media (MSM), the Sony owned media company which had acquired exclusive rights to the India-New Zealand TV Series, appears to have received an interim injunction from the Delhi High Court, preventing premier Cricket websites ESPNCricinfo, Cricbuzz and the online version of Radio One, the radio channel owned by BSE listed Next Mediaworks‘ from providing live updates and commentary online. While many publications have reported this injunction – CricketCountry, Indiantelevision.com and TelevisionPoint - MediaNama couldn’t locate a copy of this order on the Delhi High Court’s website. We’re yet to receive a response to emails sent to Cricbuzz and Cricinfo, and Mult-Screen Media appears to have changed its PR agency in the last two weeks, and apparently the old one doesn’t have any contacts in MSM anymore. (Updated below)
The India-New Zealand series began on Sunday, January 19th 2014, and will continue till February 18th, and includes 5 One Day International matches, and two Test matches. The series is being broadcast online on SonyLIV.com, and on its mobile applications. The New Zealand Cricket Board had granted exclusive media rights including television, internet, mobile and data rights to MSM for the Indian sub-continent.
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My 21yr old told me the other day that she was going to the 7's next year, apparently it just the best party ever .... she was surprised that there might be rugby
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I had the cricinfo ball-by-ball commentary on pretty much the whole game and it wasn't delayed.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
Especially if you have kids.
Or if you're a kid old enough to go with your friends after school. Way to lock the next generation out.
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Aaaannnd.......
You have two sides, one out in the field and one in. Each man that's in the side that's in goes out, and when he's out he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side thats been in goes out and tries to get those coming in, out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out.
When a man goes out to go in, the men who are out try to get him out, and when he is out he goes in and the next man in goes out and goes in. There are two men called umpires who stay all out all the time and they decide when the men who are in are out.
When both sides have been in and all the men have out, and both sides have been out twice after all the men have been in, including those who are not out, that is the end of the game!Five days later.......
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Russell Brown, in reply to
I had the cricinfo ball-by-ball commentary on pretty much the whole game and it wasn’t delayed.
It only seemed to be delayed via the Cricinfo mobile app, for some reason.
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SteveL, in reply to
I live close to Eden Park, but for me to take my 2 kids (girls, so it's possible the stay might have been short-ish), would have cost us $60. If my wife wanted to come too, $80.
I love cricket and despair as much as the next person at all the empty seats at test matches, but it's a fair whack to get along to watch.
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Unfuck Putin, the horse and the PR photoshoot he rode in on...a backgrounder...
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Couldn't resist. What playing cricket looks like to Americans (or perhaps many of us)
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I'm a cricket tragic so I fronted up with the high price for one day. Guy next to me in the ticket queue with two kids was scared off by the price and went home. What annoyed me was that the Cricket NZ website said walk up tickets were $40, I paid $45 and when I received the physical ticket it said $40 plus $2 'stadium purchase surcharge', total $42. How hard would a little transparency be. Cheap advance purchase tickets are all well and good in theory but until you know what the weather is going to be like and whether you'll be able to get of work its a bit hard to make a commitment to go. I have been stung in the past buying a non refundable ticket for a game that was rained off.
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One of the things that makes test cricket so great for me is the duration. That very thing that causes many to roll their eyes (5 days! and a draw!) is the thing that attracts me. In so many other sports it's a moment of brilliance that decides the result, in test cricket a moment is just that. No matter how good the catch may have been there are still nine more wickets to get, nine more batsmen to challenge you, twice!
That duration emphasizes the importance of the team in cricket. It doesn't matter how good one batsman, a team will lose regularly until it has 4 or 5 batsmen who are reliable enough to get big scores every second or third try.
And yet batting is very obviously such an individual, almost solitary exercise, you see batsmen go through the range of human emotions over time. A single batsman can spend hours at the crease and during that time they reveal so much of their character, be it dogged patience or flamboyant skill.
And it really is the duration that reveals all those things about the people on the field. Twenty-20 is entertaining but test cricket is engrossing.
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This tour has certainly been a revelation, there wouldn't have been many that picked events would unfold as they have which is the great thing about sport
Also compare and contrast the teams on field behaviour with the Ashes, no one has threatened to break anyone's arm as far as I can tell
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And as for prices - sigh. Does it really benefit New Zealand cricket to have Eden Park mostly empty? I'm sure there is some kind of cost per person to have them in the stadium but it sure as hell isn't $45. Once they've committed to using Eden Park then the more people they can get into the stadium the better.
The last hour free used to be great, more than once I'd go to the last hour after work and then make the decision to come to the whole day the next day. And just having a few more people in the stadium made the game more exciting. I bet the players appreciated it after 5 hours in the sun (or wind or rain).
Why not have a $5 day and see how many come along? Why not let schoolkids in for a gold coin?
Surely the aim is to have a better TV spectacle (that's where the real money is) so stop pretending that the gate fees are important to profitability and instead think about getting more people to experience the way the game looks live.
And on that note the biggest difference with being at the ground for me ... it's how close you are, the TV makes everything seem more distant somehow, at the ground I feel like the players are just so close.
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Russell Brown, in reply to
And on that note the biggest difference with being at the ground for me … it’s how close you are, the TV makes everything seem more distant somehow, at the ground I feel like the players are just so close.
Especially in the South Stand at Eden Park. Sit down near the sightscreen at that short, short boundary and you really are very close to what's going on.
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a remember a few years back - too long to remember who we were playing - where play ended on day four with NZ within a gnats whisker of victory. Entry was free the next morning so I took some time off work and went along to celebrate. can't see the same thing happening now.
and I used to love the bleachers in the southern stand, no-one within coo-ee of me, my wireless, dad's old binoculars, bumper box of k fried, french stick, bottle of whatever had taken my fancy, and whatever I'd smuggled in. a nice time was had every time.
as for current prices, how do they compare to Super 15 and such?
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