BBL among most watched top-10

Melbourne, Jan 11: Australia's tiol Twenty20 cricket competition has rocketed into the top-10 most watched sporting leagues for 2015-16, with an average of 28,279 fans attending the matches this season.

The Big Bash League (BBL), which is in its fifth year, has drawn record crowds around the country, with more than 80,000 spectators attending a Melbourne derby last week.

BBL now sits ninth on the list of highest attended sports, edging out Japan's Nippon Professiol Baseball which averages 28,279 attendees, and the ranking is just below Spain's football league La Liga, which draws an average attendance of 28,498.

Australian rules football also appears in the top 10, with the Australian Football League drawing an average crowd of 33,428 per game.

The average Big Bash attendance is expected to keep rising, with tourment organisers expecting a crowd of more than 40,000 people to watch a Sydney derby which takes place at the Sydney Cricket Ground this week.

The news comes on the back of a recent announcement by Cricket Australia, which detailed a jump in prize money for this year's tourment, a clear sign BBL is proving popular with the punters. IANS