South Africa concern over poor crowds

Cricket South Africa (CSA) has appointed IFM, a sports marketing company, to investigate the poor attendances at the early matches against England. The first Twenty20, played on a Friday evening at the Wanderers attracted only 16,600 fans, in a 34,000-capacity stadium, while under 8000 showed up for the second at Centurion on a Sunday.

The glut of international fixtures has been a contentious issue recently, with concern that the overloaded calendar is forcing supporters to pick and choose between events. South Africa is a prime example, having already hosted last season's IPL, the Champions Trophy, rugby union's Lions tour and football's Confederations Cup during 2009, while they will host the football World Cup in June and July next year.

Locals might simply have reached sporting saturation and want to save their cash for major events. With these growing concerns, Gerald Majola, the CSA chief executive, is urging fans to get in touch and help administrators understand why supporters are staying at home.

"We like hearing from the fans. The last fan survey we ran provided some interesting insights, some of which we have already followed up on," he said. "People asked for more information so we launched our Facebook and Twitter platforms which have been extremely popular and has dramatically improved our interactions with fans."

Falling crowd numbers for one-day fixtures, which traditionally have been well attended, doesn't bode well for the upcoming Test series which have often been a harder sell. South Africa hosted Australia last year to contest the top spot in Tests but the games took place in front of almost empty stands.

Marc Jury, the managing director of IFM, the company commissioned to study the trend, believes the problem could lie with cricket being designed to favour TV audiences over live ones.

"Through our research across different sporting codes we have always encountered the response that the 'energy and atmosphere' of live sporting events is a critical element in drawing supporters to the ground," he said

"Something that is evident is the live experience has not kept pace with the ease and comfort of the 'TV product' and thus people often choose to watch from their living rooms instead of Row F. Too often rights holders make decisions based on gut-feel and not by listening to what their fans want."