Gold medals at the 2028 and 2032 Olympics and a four-fold increase in junior participation rates are part of a 10-year strategy for women’s cricket.
Australian Cricket’s recently released Women and Girls Action Plan plots a path for increased participation, audiences, commercial revenue and representation over the next decade.
Among the 2034 goals outlined in the plan is reaching a 600,000 average annual attendance for all women’s cricket in Australia.
It also wants to grow total revenue from women’s cricket to $121 million, an increase of $100 million, and increase participation by girls, aged 5-12 years, from 25,000 to 100,000.
It plans a $500 million investment in infrastructure for women and girls’ cricket and along the way pick up gold medals at the 2028 Los Angeles and 2032 Brisbane Olympics.
The strategy calls for at least a 40 percent female representation in key positions across Australian Cricket, including executives, boards and community cricket roles.
Australian Cricket said there would be a major focus on filling stadiums and growing viewing audiences for women’s internationals and the WBBL and creating more playing opportunities and higher player payments.
“As a result, the WBBL will feature a 40-game regular season (in line with the BBL) and a new domestic women’s T20 competition will be introduced creating additional high-performance opportunities for domestic players,” Australian Cricket said in a statement.
It said the new T20 competition would raise the average female domestic player salary for 2024-25 – inclusive of WBBL contract, State/Territory contract and domestic match payments – to $163,322, an increase of $12,303 (8 percent) on 2023-24, while the current WBBL salary cap will be maintained meaning no reduction in player payments.
