England and Wales Cricket Board

Issue

The ECB wanted to understand the reasons why many cricket fans who supported England chose not to attend live matches, and to discover what would encourage more of them to do so.

Solution

Using the ECB’s existing market data on England cricket fans we developed a sophisticated segmentation of different types of fan based upon how closely they followed the sport. We then conducted two groups among each type of fan – one among people who had been to an international match before but not recently, and one among fans who had never been to an England match. This enabled us to reasons for not going to an international match that were common to all types of fan, as well as reasons for not attending that were unique to particular supporters.

Outcome

The research provided invaluable insight into how different types of fans thought about attending international matches, what the barriers to attending a match were for them, and what the best ways were to enable them to overcome the barriers and attend a cricket match. The ECB used the findings from the research to inform its advertising campaigns for fans to attend the England v India Test and One Day International Series during summer 2011.