Regional titles receive financial support to continue covering cricket

With football often dominating the back pages of the UK press, it’s easy for smaller (but nonetheless popular) sports clubs to feel slightly disenfranchised by the media.

But as the commercial pressures of running a newspaper continue to squeeze editorial budgets, editors need to make tough decisions. Football sells papers, and while readers may also be interested in athletics, cycling or tennis, it makes little financial sense to invest in coverage that won’t drive circulation (or page impressions).

Many sports journalists won’t like their craft to be talked about in such cold business terms but minority sports coverage doesn’t deliver a ROI.

Sports teams know that a lack of media coverage makes it harder for them to get new people involved in their sport. The less people get involved, the less the media are interested. It’s very much a case of ever decreasing circles.

This is why a scheme run by The England and Wales Cricket Board known as The Cricket Writers’ Club, which has recently awarded financial assistance to a number of regional titles for their coverage of professional cricket, makes so much sense.

Mark Baldwin, chairman of the Cricket Writers’ Club, told journalists: “The Cricket Writers’ Club’s continued support for ECB’s initiative in running these awards now includes offering prize monies in the Regional Newspaper of the Year category, precisely because the club wants to do what it can to support hard-pressed cricket writers in the regional press and also to underline its belief in the value to the game of coverage of county cricket in this area.

John Collings, editor of the Sunday Independent who received a £2,500 financial reward from the Cricket Writers Club said: “We’re honoured to win this award because its values share our values: a passion for and commitment to sport all levels, particularly grass-roots sport which these days too often struggles for the comprehensive coverage it deserves.”

PR has always been about earned media over paid media but when titles have to make editorial decisions based on cold economic facts, perhaps it’s time this line become a little more blurred.