Durham County Cricket Club won the Inspiring Fan Loyalty award at the 2017 BOCA ceremony held at Lord’s.
DCCC were recognised for their efforts to bring more children and families to watch cricket at Emirates Riverside and were also nominated alongside Warwickshire and Surrey for the Welcoming Families award, losing out to an impressive Nottinghamshire entry.
This year for the first time the awards, hosted by 5 live sport’s Mark Chapman, were presented at the black-tie evening event, which has recognised non-playing excellence since 2006.
Durham’s initiative that saw them pick up the coveted award involved creating and distributing an All Stars Sticker Book to all All Stars participants to go alongside a free Durham Jets membership and a discounted ticket price for parents. The intention was for the children to collect all eight stickers across Durham’s eight Blast fixtures and grab the limited edition shiny sticker at the final match against Warwickshire branded as ‘All Stars Day’.
The initiative was very successful. 217 children took up their free mini jets membership and provided their details for our database as well as submitting their completed sticker books. In addition to the children, 84 adults bought the reduced-price memberships. The All Stars day proved to be a big hit with over 500 All Stars children, activators and volunteers attending our final T20 Blast game against Birmingham Bears.
Durham’s Head of Marketing and Communications, David Jackson, said: “We are delighted to win the Inspiring Fan Loyalty award as it represents the hard work currently being done to bring more children and families to Emirates Riverside.
“We are proud to have also been recognised in the Welcoming Families category as we made strong improvements to attempting to take cricket to new audiences during Blast 17 and the creation of our Family Zone was a key focus throughout the year.
“It’s great to see our hard work noticed and gives us the confidence to improve our matchday experience even further in 2018.”