Not quite sure what I think about this:
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/cricket/bears-ceo-stuart-cain-reveals-28069058
Not quite sure what I think about this:
https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/sport/cricket/bears-ceo-stuart-cain-reveals-28069058
There isn't a huge amount of overlap any more is there. There used to be lots of overlap when Warwickshire had a full set of weekend fixtures with a Championship fixture (Day 3 of 4) on the Saturday and a Sunday League fixture and football didn't have any international breaks so football ran pretty much Saturday to Saturday regularly with the odd one or two midweek games (a few more if your team went on a cup run) and one game selected for live showing on Sunday. Be nice to have more weekend cricket to watch so as to have the dilema of whether to watch cricket or footy in May or August but it's become so rare of late particularly and ruinously for August
Premier League teams season's run deeper into May than used to be the case so I guess being aware of the fixtures when scheduling any Bears T20 games for Saturday/Sunday but the trouble is the cricket fixtures come out in a fortnights time or so and then in March or April Sky will decide to move fixtures so you end up with Bears and Blues/Villa home fixtures in May clashing unintentionally anyway
As regards August. Stuart Cain should focus on getting Warwickshire playing top level cricket in August again. Or does he want these local footy fans filling the ECB coffers by rallying behind franchises?
It would help his cause if they were not called Birmingham Bears, as a Warwickshire supporter from Nuneaton, now exiled on the South Coast and also a Villa fan I do not warm to Birmingham Bears ........... sorry.
To be fair, the Club have quietly dropped the Birmingham name from the T20 side title - if you look on the website, they are now just Bears. That's not the same as bringing back the Warwickshire name but it's a start!
Of course, the Hundred side is very much a Birmingham badged team; and I suspect that is why the T20 team is now just Bears, to avoid confusion.
I can see that there is sense in sharing ideas with other sporting clubs on, say, player fitness, marketing and publicity. But I'm not so sure that a football fan who isn't already interested in cricket is going to be persuaded to come to Edgbaston.
I could well be wrong and it will be interesting to see what develops.