Women & Girls Action Plan features new opportunities for players

Cricket Australia has announced its 10-year Women and Girls Action Plan, along with the introduction of a new domestic T20 competition to commence in 2024-25.

The new T20 competition coincides with the WBBL now being reduced to a 40-game regular season (in line with the BBL). Significantly, the WBBL salary cap and retainers will not be reduced because of this change, meaning players will earn more per game in the WBBL as well.

It was important playing opportunities were not lost, so we are pleased that this new competition has not only replaced the four WBBL games but increased to a six-game season where each State and the ACT will play each other in a round-robin format and play a final for a trophy and prize money.

Following a significant uplift in female retainers as part of last year’s MOU announcement, the new T20 competition will further raise the average female domestic player's salary.

In 2024-25 a player with the average WBBL contract, the average State/Territory contract, and receiving domestic match payments from a 12-game WNCL season and six-game State T20 season will receive $163,322, an uplift of $12,303, or 8%, on 2023-24.

This comfortably places us as the most lucrative team sport for Australian athletes.

Players on minimum State/Territory contract, who don’t have a WBBL contract, will receive $57,238 before playing a game or receiving a WBBL contract. (Minimum WBBL retainer $17,736).

This represents us taking another step closer to the ACA’s long-held aim of having all our female domestic cricketers recognised as full-time professionals.

The further commercial opportunities that the new state-based T20 competition provides, alongside an enhanced WBBL and CA’s ambition to increase the commercialisation of the women’s game six-fold in the next ten years, provides us a solid platform to relentlessly pursue this aim.

"It is vital that cricket retains momentum around the advancement of the women’s game. Our women, both internationally and domestically, have proven time and time again that they are the best in the world, and I am proud that we can recognise this by making them the highest paid and most well-supported athletes in Australian team sport,” said ACA CEO, Todd Greenberg.

"Today’s announcement represents a further step in the right direction – but if we are to continue the progress we’ve made, we can’t miss a step in better commercialising what is a premium sporting product that has a passionate and dedicated audience."

The ACA will continue to advocate for further progress which includes the opportunity for red ball cricket to be played at a domestic level, reflecting and further supporting the success of the multi-format series employed in the international game.

We would like to sincerely thank all of you who were involved in helping us achieve this outcome, particularly our delegates who articulated a powerful, united voice on behalf of the playing group.

As part of the broader launch of Women and Girls Action Plan, CA has promised there will be a major focus on filling stadiums and growing viewing audiences for women’s internationals and the WBBL, as well as creating more playing opportunities and higher player wages.