Chances of a 12 team tournament in 2019?

[Spark]

because there is no expectation that a significant number of people will have any interest in the vast majority of matches. to a first approximation audience for a 1st round match between world numbers 105 vs 72, and the sheer number of matches means that overlap is necessary or the matches that do actually interest people will get far too spaced out. when every match is significant and attracts a significant audience (not least because the general public know who the players actually are) then they aren't overlapped.

you don't have that problem in a cricket wc. having more games per day would simply annoy people by forcing them to choose between two matches involving teams of interest, because there is no way you can structure it otherwise whilst the number of minnows remains relatively small (which it is even in a 14 team wc). i can tolerate two matches a day to an extent. three - no chance.

 

[Pratters]

Isn't this the same for the cricket world cup too? A vast majority wouldn't have interest in a West Indies-UAE game. Makes sense to hold it on the same day as the Australia-New Zealand game, say.

 

[Spark]

no it doesn't, because i and many other people would like to watch both games. notwithstanding the fact that there is no way you're going to be able to compact the schedule like that without ending up with two "marketable" games at the same time.

this is a great deal of hassle to solve a problem whose existence is highly questionable to say the least.

 

[Pratters]

I am not sure you, I and many others include the vast majority though. We belong to a small proportion of the cricket tragics compared to the larger number cricket fans who aren't necessarily that invested in the game.

 

[Spark]

it's a world cup. there will be plenty of neutrals watching.

 

[Pratters]

When there are two 'marketeable' games, have it on different days, by all means.

Any ways, my idea tournament would be as follows -

Two groups of 6 teams each. Round Robin.

So total 15 games in each group. Top team goes directly to the semis. 2nd and 3rd play a quarter final. Gives 12 teams a chance to compete in the world cup and makes the round robin stage exciting and the competition simple enough to follow.

I would like this stage to be over in 15-20 days and then the knock outs in the last 12 days.

 

[Spark]

why are we so obsessed with compressing it anyway? how do you look at the last two weeks and think "gee, i think we have too much of that"?

 

[Jono]

why are we so obsessed with compressing it anyway? how do you look at the last two weeks and think "gee, i think we have too much of that"?

especially once every 4 years

 

[Prince EWS]

Why do you actually want it to be over quicker though? What's the point? We only get one of these every four years, so why do you want to squeeze it all into a small period where you have much less opportunity to actually see most of it? I actually don't get the upside at all.

You're talking about marketing now but the start of the conversation was actually you complaining about the organisers caring too much about marketing by trying to get the most viewership out of each game!

 

[Prince EWS]

Haha Spark and Jono made my point while I was typing it up. Best guys.

 

[Scaly piscine]

The bigger the groups the more dead rubbers you get and very early in the tournament.

Not exactly, a top team that beats another top team is virtually through in the current format and has nothing to play for because 1st or 4th makes no difference.

A minnow team will be effectively eliminated earlier (but you can get around this by providing next-WC qualification rewards) but this isn't going to make much difference anyway, the top sides have plenty to play for pretty much all of the group phase. This is better than creating a scenario where all bar 2-3 of the top 8 sides have nothing to play by halfway through the group phase.

 

[Pratters]

I get the argument of wanting it to be longer. It is once every 4 years. It is amazing to watch more ODI cricket when it does matter. The World Cup is awesome, so why shouldn't we have more of it? I get it.

However, I don't get how a world cup can be such a long affair. World Cups are by nature, shorter events. It is not a league which goes on for months on. A cup is a smaller competition. Four weeks looks the right length for me for a world cup. Too long and it smacks of the administrators trying to maximise money by having more games on tv to make more money than any thing to me. It is not easy to sustain interest. People talk about it being nice to have a game a day. Who watches a game a day though? In the end, even with 15 games in 20 days, most people would end up watching the same number of games. It would also mean sustained interest rather than fractured interest. I am keen on a game here, a game there, I watch another game when I can. It is not as charged up as it would with a tighter schedule and a better grouping (like say 3 qualifying from 6, or 4 from 9 in 92 or the super sixes in 99).

But whatever, I am loving the tournament with a competition which actually has value. The length of the tournament is not as important as some of the other problems we have in cricket right now.

 

[Spark]

World Cups are by nature, shorter events. It is not a league which goes on for months on. A cup is a smaller competition. Four weeks looks the right length for me for a world cup.

on what basis?

 

[G.I.Joe]

Not exactly, a top team that beats another top team is virtually through in the current format and has nothing to play for because 1st or 4th makes no difference.

A minnow team will be effectively eliminated earlier (but you can get around this by providing next-WC qualification rewards) but this isn't going to make much difference anyway, the top sides have plenty to play for pretty much all of the group phase. This is better than creating a scenario where all bar 2-3 of the top 8 sides have nothing to play by halfway through the group phase.

Yeah, facing either Bangladesh or New Zealand in your first knockout game is just a matter of potaytoe potatoh.

 

[Pratters]

on what basis?

Cups are shorter than leagues traditionally. There is a reason it is the World Cup and not World League. It is meant to be held over a period where countries from all over the world gather, for a competition, and go home after that. Not stay there till the tree has grown from the sapling.

 

[Spark]

so basically you want the game's premiere global tournament to be artificially compressed because of... semantics?

what?

 

[Pratters]

No. I want it put at what I believe is the right length as:

It is not easy to sustain interest. People talk about it being nice to have a game a day. Who watches a game a day though? In the end, even with 15 games in 20 days, most people would end up watching the same number of games. It would also mean sustained interest rather than fractured interest. I am keen on a game here, a game there, I watch another game when I can. It is not as charged up as it would with a tighter schedule and a better grouping (like say 3 qualifying from 6, or 4 from 9 in 92 or the super sixes in 99).

 

[G.I.Joe]

The Champions Trophy fills that short and sweet niche. I think ATM both tournaments are fine as they are.

 

[Pratters]

Lengths of each world cup

1992 - 2-3 days more than a month.

1996 - 2-3 days more than a month.

1999 - 5 weeks. I quite enjoyed this world cup. Remember a sustained interest for so many games.

Got a bit less interesting from here on -

2003 - 6 weeks

2007 - 6 weeks

2011 - 6 weeks

2015 - looks like this is 6 weeks as well.

While 1996 was a bit boring in the group stages, that had more to do with the format. I found my self generally more interested in almost each game where two things happened -

- Format had more meaning for further progress of teams in more games,
- The length was maximum of 5 weeks.

 

[Sarun]

Are you projecting your lack of sustained interest onto others? Don't think you got any credible evidence that show loss of sustained interest among masses that watch the Cup.