Intro
Kevin Pietersen’s fix for empty test grounds is to stop charging for them — free entry where seats go unsold, with boards taking their revenue from T20 franchise leagues instead. He was reacting to South Africa against Australia: the world champions against the world’s number one side, and stands empty enough to become the story. The first test in Durban drew fewer than 20,000 people across five days.
The same South African summer complicates the argument. When tickets for the New Year’s test against England went on sale at Newlands in May, the first release was gone in minutes — with only about 13% set aside for the general public, and much of the ground going to hospitality, sponsors and travel packages. The SA20, meanwhile, sold out 22 of 34 matches last season. The demand exists. What differs is whether a fixture reads as an event.
In the vlog below, cricexec founder and publisher Zee Zaidi works through the numbers, what free entry would actually cost boards, and why most of them have no SA20 to lean on.
Transcript
Zee Zaidi:
Kevin Pietersen wants test cricket to be free. Not everywhere, just at the grounds that can’t fill their seats. Boards, KP says, should make their money from T20 franchise leagues instead. Kevin’s reacting to the series of South Africa against Australia, the world champions against the world’s number one side, and stands so empty they’ve become the story.
But there is a problem with the free ticket fix. The same South African summer also has a test match that sold out in minutes, which suggests this isn’t really about the price of a ticket.
I’m Zee Zaidi, founder and publisher of cricexec, the leading publication covering the business of cricket worldwide. We’re read daily by the people who run the sport, boards, franchises, sponsors, and players, and more.
So back to the empty seats. They are real enough, no question. The first test in Durban drew fewer than 20,000 people across five days. That’s under 4,000 a day. In the second test, there was a struggle as well, as rain wiped out much of the first two days.
And this wasn’t a weak fixture. These two played the last World Test Championship final, their first and second in the current cycle. It’s South Africa’s first home test since becoming world champions, and Australia’s first test tour to South Africa since the ball tampering series of 2018 that got a ton of attention. Mike Atherton put it simply on the Sky Sports Cricket podcast, “If that context can’t bring in a crowd, it’s a worrying sign.” And the people who stayed home missed something. South Africa were five down for under 100 at the end of day two. Temba Bavuma’s 179, five wickets for Marco Jansen to bowl Australia out for 99, and on day five, a win by an innings and 31 runs. One all, decider in Cape Town.
So is Pietersen right? On the money, he has a point. At under 4,000 people a day, the gate isn’t what’s paying for a test match. Outside of big holiday fixtures, the real value of home test is the broadcast money, and broadcasters would much rather show a full ground than an empty one. But free is never actually free. The grounds still has to open, security stewards, cleaning, and catering all gets paid. And once you’ve told people a test match is worth nothing, it’s very hard to tell them next year that it’s worth something. The bigger issue, though, is the assumption underneath it, that South Africans won’t pay to watch test cricket.
In May, South Africa put tickets on sale for the New Year’s test against England at Newlands. The first release was gone in minutes, and only about 13% of the tickets were set aside for the general public. About four in 10 general tickets went to travel packages, much of the rest of the ground to hospitality, sponsors, and complimentary seats. CSA ended up apologizing for how it communicated all that. But look at what it tells you. At Newlands at New Year, CSA isn’t trying to fill seats. It’s rationing them and selling a big share of them as packages. Then there’s the SA20, exactly the kind of league Pietersen wants to pay the bills. Last season, 22 of its 34 matches sold out, and the league says its grounds were 84% full across this season.
So South Africa doesn’t have a cricket demand problem. It doesn’t have a test cricket problem either, really. It has a problem with which test matches people treat as events. Newlands at New Year is a holiday, a festival, a destination for touring fans. Durban in October is a working week, a school term, and as Nasser Hussain pointed out, the risk of being sent home at half past three for bad light. To its credit, the KwaZulu-Natal Union has launched a review. Its CEO, Heinrich Strydom, has acknowledged that fans are weighing competing demands on their time and money. That’s the right question to be asking, and it’s not a new one. When Australia last played a test at Kingsmead back in 2018, Kevin Pietersen was already tweeting about the empty stands on day one. Same ground, same opponent, eight years apart.
There’s one more catch. Quote, “Make your money from franchise leagues only works if you have a franchise league that makes money.” Most boards don’t have an SA20 to lean on. For them, home tests are still part of the business, not something they can afford to give away.
So here’s where I land. The empty seats in Durban don’t prove test cricket is dying in South Africa. Newlands proves it isn’t. What they show is that test cricket is still being scheduled as a fixture when fans buy it as an event, right? Free tickets might put a few more people into Kingsmead. They won’t turn a weekday in October into the New Year’s test. That’s the real job for the boards, and the Cape Town decider is the next test of whether anyone’s listening.
