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Nine years after the 2017 Women’s World Cup in England helped transform women’s cricket in the host nation, the expanded 2026 Twenty20 (T20) Women’s World Cup aims to take the sport to another level.
From 12th June to 5th July, seven venues across England and Wales will host the women’s game’s biggest short-format international tournament, which comprises 12 teams for the first time.
For the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), which is organising the event, the competition represents a major opportunity to accelerate the growth of women’s cricket and build on the legacy of nine years ago.
No stone was left unturned. To maximise revenue and visibility, the ECB integrated the tournament’s local organising committee (LOC) into its existing operations and unveiled the full schedule nearly a year in advance in a bid to generate momentum and early ticket sales.
“We’ve just got a massive opportunity to maximise this moment and to affect long term change,” Beth Barrett Wild, tournament director and the ECB’s outgoing director of women’s professional game tells SportsPro.
“That’s in particular from an audience perspective and making sure that we’re really kind of making this moment stick.”
Beth Barrett-Wild (pictured centre) sees this year’s tournament as a massive opportunity for the ECB to create lasting change (Image credit: SportsPro)
How ticket sales are driving record revenue targets
The growing popularity of women’s cricket has had a positive impact on matchday, media and commercial revenues, leading to increased earnings for national boards and teams.
Following the lead of other governing bodies such as Fifa and Uefa, the International Cricket Council (ICC) unbundled sponsorship rights for its women’s competitions last year, allowing brands to sponsor women’s cricket events independently of their male counterparts.
This faith in the commercial appeal and standalone value of women’s cricket, was vindicated with Unilever and Google among those signing up.
The ICC has also backed the women’s game with equal prize money across its men’s and women’s events. This year’s T20 Women’s World Cup will award a record prize pot of US$8.76 million, a ten per cent rise on the previous edition, with the winners to collect US$2.34 million.
The ECB’s ambition is for the Women’s T20 World Cup to be the ICC’s most commercially successful women’s event ever. It hopes to attract 270,000 fans through the turnstiles – double the attendance record set by the 2020 Women’s T20 World Cup in Australia.
Speaking a few weeks ahead of the tournament, Barrett-Wild says ticket sales are “tracking where we need to be” and predicted the tournament will be the “highest grossing global women’s cricket event from a ticket sales perspective”.
Demographic composition of sales are just as important as volume. So far, 36 per cent of ticket buyers are female and 22 per cent are children. In contrast, female fans make up 30 per cent of ticketholders for the domestic Hundred competition, and 18 per cent of attendees of English men’s international game.
The T20 Women’s World Cup is drawing in more female and younger ticket holders than other English cricket events (Image credit: Getty Images)
Converting casual fandom into lasting fandom
The challenge now is for the ECB to persuade both fair-weather sports fans and regular cricket watchers to attend more women’s cricket games. The organisation estimates the tournament can attract two million “bandwagon” fans and use that exposure to build lasting interest beyond this summer.
“What we’re trying to do through this tournament is to reset the normal around how people think, feel and behave around women’s cricket,” Barrett-Wild says. “From like a brand-building perspective, we want to almost stop selling the progress of women’s sport and just start selling the sport itself.
“We’re going to utilise the platform through the World Cup this summer to show how it is world-class cricket with world-class players. For general sports fans, that appreciation for how good the players are, and how compelling the tournament is, is hopefully what’s going to keep them coming back.”
Beyond attracting spectators to venues, the ECB also sees broadcast reach as critical to building long-term engagement. Sky will show the tournament exclusively in the UK, reaching millions of existing subscribers.
To broaden the audience further, Sky is also airing select games, including the opening match and the final, free to air on its Sky Mix linear channel, the Sky Sports YouTube channel and on the Sky Sports app. The move, which Barrett-Wild describes as a “straightforward decision”, is designed to maximise exposure for the tournament’s biggest fixtures.
The strategy echoes Sky’s decision to sublicense the 2019 men’s Cricket World Cup final to Channel 4. England’s victory drew a combined peak audience of 8.3 million and helped boost interest in the sport, more than a decade after English cricket went behind a paywall immediately after the historic 2005 Ashes series victory against Australia.
Media revenues remain hugely important to the sport, but the importance of FTA and digital coverage in attracting new audiences is increasingly recognised, as demonstrated by the BBC and Channel 5’s coverage of The Hundred and selected England internationals.
“As the primary host broadcaster, Sky feel not just responsibility but affection for what they’re trying to do,” Barrett-Wild says. “They’re going to do a standalone bespoke campaign for the World Cup – that just shows how important this is to them as a business.
“They’ve said the delivery of the Women’s T20 World Cup is one of their top three priorities this year. They are a world class broadcaster, and their ability not just to tell the story but to just showcase the women’s game this summer will really take it to the next level.”
Capitalising on a breakthrough moment
The launch of The Hundred, which sees women’s teams compete in the same window and the same venues as their male counterparts, in 2021 has helped catalyse women’s cricket in England, supported by a fully professional domestic structure. This has delivered more exposure and driven up playing standards whilst also offering realistic career pathways for ambitious young cricketers.
The ECB now aims to build on that progress and capitalise on an expected post-tournament surge in interest, by setting up more opportunities to engage with women’s cricket this summer.
This includes the scheduling of England’s first home women’s Test at Lord’s against India just five days after the T20 Women’s World Cup final, before the Vitality Blast Women’s Finals and The Hundred continue the domestic season.
“We talk a lot about this being a movement, not a moment,” Barrett-Wild says. “That is all about making sure we’re not just creating a one-off, high-profile moment – we do want it to result in systemic change in women’s cricket.
“A lot of that centres around behaviour and how people interact with, value and view women’s cricket and really building that for the long term. Most of that comes down to culture, and that is to do with people and leadership, so we will do plenty this summer to create the conditions to enable us to deliver that in the long term.”
Alongside these efforts to reshape perceptions of women’s cricket, the ECB is also seeking to increase its commercial value. Barrett-Wild describes the opportunity for women’s cricket as “massive” and points to a planned 25 per cent increase in ticket prices for England Women matches next summer.
“We’re not trying to price anybody out from being able to come and watch England Women,” she adds. “There will still be very accessibly priced tickets available, but being able to increase ticket prices will demonstrate a growth in the value of women’s cricket as a product.
“We’re at a stage now where women’s cricket should be reassuringly expensive.”
The ECB wants to raise ticket prices for English women’s cricket games to reflect the sport’s increasing value (Image credit: Getty Images)
Women’s cricket’s opportunity to close the gap
The landscape of women’s sport in Britain is radically different from 2017. England’s national football team won the Women’s European Championship on home soil in 2022, while rugby union’s Red Roses followed up by lifting the Women’s Rugby World Cup last year.
In both sports, on-field success increased visibility and drove investment in infrastructure and grassroots participation.
Cricket now has an opportunity to replicate that trajectory, and the ECB will hope this year’s tournament acts as a catalyst for further development and a lasting legacy. However, the federation acknowledges there is still work to be done to maximise the sport’s growth.
“We still know that we currently have gaps,” Barrett-Wild adds. “There are gaps in participation, in the sport’s perception and in its visibility.
“But we’re closing those and this summer’s tournament is a real opportunity to make sure we’re creating the conditions to slam the door shut.”
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