Cricket's big experiment has grown into one of Australian television's top assets, with a Big Bash bidding battle looming at the end of next season as Channel Nine try to wrest the lucrative rights from incumbent broadcasters Ten.
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The value of hosting the competition is believed to have tripled during Ten's tenure - the free-to-air network forked out $20m for a five-year deal which began in 2013 and the next contract is expected to go for upwards of $60m with Channel Nine head of sport Tom Malone saying back in November that his company "Want everything".
Network Ten have played a huge role in growing the BBL which has transformed from a domestic competition into a global phenomenon boasting the seventh highest average attendance of any professional sporting league in the world, and a television audience that consistently tops more than one million viewers per night.
Saturday night's Sydney Smash at the SCG between the Sixers and Thunder will be the 12th sellout of the tournament already, and close to 1.2 million viewers are expected to tune in.
When Ten landed the broadcasting rights four years ago, network executive of the BBL, David Barham, was given a blank canvas and a brief by Cricket Australia to attract a whole new set of fans to the sport which had seemingly started to grow stale.
Test cricket was predominantly watched by males and one-day internationals had lost the excitement created during the Kerry Packer-era four decades ago.
Barham immediately went to work and targeted families, women and children as the future of the T20 audience.
Close-up cameras surrounding and even attached to the batsmen were installed.
In-play interviews with wired-up players became an integral part of the coverage, and Barham revamped the entire commentary team bringing in Australian cricketing champions Mark Waugh, Ricky Ponting, Adam Gilchrist and Damien Fleming.
"Those guys have got such great chemistry," Barham said.
"I wanted massive credibility and I got that with those four guys and I also wanted people who loved the game.
"It's four mates that happened to be champion cricketers, telling stories about what had happened to them.
"We then started cutting them into the coverage so you'd see them and you got their personality and you understood their personality and you understood how funny they were.
"They become as much part of the cricket as the cricket."
Barham believes the television success of the BBL has translated to the increase in crowd numbers which average 29,735 this season after 24 games.
"We kept plastering the TV with kids and families and people at home started going 'that looks like really good fun I think we'll go'," Barham said.
"We were a massive marketing tool for the game at the grounds because we were showing how good a time everyone was having at the match.
"If you've got a broadcaster and a sporting body working that closely, you can really achieve things like what we've done here."
Should the next broadcast deal triple in value as expected, it will allow the competition to grow even stronger through inflation of the current $1.4m salary cap available to each team.
That would attract even more international stars to the Australian game, which already boasts representatives from England, India, the West Indies, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and South Africa across the men's and women's leagues.
Big Bash chief Anthony Everard said Cricket Australia expected plenty of suitors to challenge Ten for the television rights.
"We're anticipating very strong interest," Everard said.
"Any program on free-to-air that can consistently deliver a million viewers in a night every night for almost 35 nights in a row is obviously going to be in high demand."
The women's game has also experienced significant growth as part of the Big Bash boom, with Channel Ten broadcasting 12 games WBBL live this season across its main channel, and One.
Attendances have spiked significantly, and officials are hoping more than 20,000 fans will flood the SCG on Saturday to watch the women's double header between the Sixers and Thunder which will act as a curtain raiser to the men's game.
