Levelling the playing field: the case of The Hundred and gender equality in cricket

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) introduced ‘The Hundred’, a flagship domestic cricket competition, in July 2021, as part of their ‘long-term commitment to making cricket a gender-balanced sport’. Despite The Hundred’s success in attracting a new audience to cricket, there is still a limited understanding of the spectator experience and specifically how this aligned tournament brought about greater gender equality within cricket. This study addresses this gap using a mixed-methods approach, combining online surveys with a series of focus groups. Our findings point to the success of The Hundred in creating a positive experience for female spectators, increasing the audience for women’s cricket, and breaking down men’s negative perceptions of women’s cricket. However, poor/drunken crowd behaviour detracted from the match-day experience for some spectators, highlighting a clash between this behaviour and the marketing of the tournament as family-friendly.