The 12th edition of the BBL comes to a close this weekend, and attention now turns to what next season and beyond will look like, especially with a reduced number of games.

From 2024/25, instead of 14 regular season games, every team will play 10 - five home and away - as part of changes to Cricket Australia's new $1.5 billion TV rights deal announced earlier this month.

There remains speculation about whether the move could come in a year earlier though.

The ACT government currently has an agreement in place with the Thunder to host one WBBL and two BBL games for next season.

Whether the 10-game change happens next season or the year after, it's possible the season reduction may impact the Thunder's future visits to the capital.

"That'd be one that we'll have to talk about once the season is done," Thunder boss Andrew Gilchrist told The Canberra Times.

"We'll do some reviews, and we'll talk about how we think the season went, then we'll start to make some decisions, and throw it around the table from there - if we need to at all."

Gilchrist said the Thunder men and women all enjoy playing at Manuka Oval each year, with strong fan support in Canberra.

Just two weeks ago, David Warner and the Thunder had a sell-out crowd watch them scrape into the BBL finals after a turbulent season.

"We've worked really hard over the years to develop a good relationship with Canberra," Gilchrist explained.

"We run clinics, hold open training sessions, member events, and obviously DJ Sue is now an icon of Sydney Thunder too.

"So we've definitely embedded ourselves in Canberra and the relationship is really strong."

Warner did say after that last game however, that while the Thunder like playing in regional areas, they "have to service where [they] are in the city areas first".

This season, of the Thunder's seven home games, two were played in Canberra and one in Albury, with the remaining four at Sydney Showground Stadium.

Gilchrist and Cricket ACT chief executive Olivia Thornton both said there haven't been any discussion as yet about renewing the agreement to play in Canberra beyond next season.

"We'll pick that up with the government and also with Cricket NSW and the Thunder team," Thornton said.

"We always want to attract as much content as we can.

"We've certainly shown over the last few years that we've got a community that will back it, whether it's female, male, white ball, red ball, day-night content."

Similarly the ACT government said they plan to "discuss opportunities to host future BBL matches with Cricket NSW and Cricket Australia over the coming months".

Our journalists work hard to provide local, up-to-date news to the community. This is how you can continue to access our trusted content: