It transformed Australian sport. Now the WBBL is a boardroom afterthought

The loudest voices in Australian cricket are currently shaping the debate on the future of the Big Bash.

Phenomenal windfalls seen around the Indian Premier League and the Hundred in England, combined with increased global jostling for Twenty20 talent and a disrupted market tightening sums available via broadcast rights, have decision makers narrowing in on not whether privatisation is the right path, but rather what form that path should take.

I’ll leave it to others to discuss the merits, and pitfalls, of privatisation, with that topic extensively debated.

Instead, I’m interested in the topic that is barely rating a mention at all.

Where is the Women’s Big Bash League in all of this?

Reading the coverage and listening to interviews with the sport’s leaders, you could be forgiven for forgetting one of the world’s premier women’s cricket competitions even exists.

Occasionally, the WBBL slips in as a throwaway comment at the back end; something that comes attached to the asset being sold, like the steak knives in the old Demtel ads, as opposed to being an asset in its own right.

And frankly, I could do without the sense of deja vu. It wasn’t always this way.

Significant effort and investment went into rewiring cricket to respect and realise the value of women’s cricket. The creation of the WBBL in 2015 marked a profound shift in how Australian cricket viewed the opportunity that is women and girls in sport.

For the first time, women’s cricket was not being reduced to a cost centre or a participation program. It was recognised as a product capable of attracting fans, sponsors, broadcasters and investment.

That belief helped transform not only Australian cricket, but Australian sport. AFLW, NRLW and Super W were just some of the developments that followed.

It contributed to unprecedented participation growth; within just a few years, there was a 2000 per cent increase in all-girls teams played out in community clubs across the country.

It built household names. It helped retain key commercial partners. It culminated in the largest women’s cricket match in history, and the largest women’s sporting event ever held in Australia, with a sold-out MCG for the Women’s T20 World Cup final in 2020.

It demonstrated what was possible when women’s sport was backed with ambition and resources.

Everything that’s been said about the Matildas over the past three years was said about women’s cricket first, just as the world slid into the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is true that the men’s Big Bash League remains the overwhelming driver of broadcast and sponsorship revenue. By extension, a BBL team will be more valuable today than a WBBL team.

But for WBBL to not even feature in the public debate? That’s a mistake.

Investors worldwide are increasingly recognising women’s teams as one of the industry’s most significant growth opportunities, and an asset class on the rise.

It’s barely three years since more than $800 million was paid for five licences to launch the Women’s Premier League. Around the world, funds worth more than $2 billion have been launched solely to invest in women’s sport properties. In the US, National Women’s Soccer League expansion fees have grown 200-fold since 2020, while the WNBA’s Golden State Valkyries recently became the world’s first billion-dollar women’s sport team.

Not a single dollar from that $2 billion is currently directed at Australia.

So again, why aren’t we talking about the WBBL, if the driver for privatisation is purely economic?

Regardless of whether internal conversations within cricket’s boardrooms differ, at the very least, the cricketing public is once again being told that women’s cricket isn’t part of the main game.

And you cannot build excitement, let alone investment, in an asset you rarely bother to discuss.

Sarah Styles is the former Director of the Office for Women in Sport and Recreation, a non-executive director of the Victorian Institute of Sport, former investment banker and served as Cricket Australia’s inaugural head of female engagement from 2014-20.

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