The county has undertaken a wide-ranging overview because the finish of the season and have determined to relaunch their males’s and ladies’s T20 groups below a brand new identify subsequent 12 months, in a bid to spice up attendances at Blast fixtures. The choice to include Bristol – the town the place the membership play – into their identify for the Blast has been authorized at board stage.
Gloucestershire’s chief govt Neil Priscott and head of viewers improvement Jenny Corridor shared the plans with members in a gathering on the County Floor on Wednesday evening, and confirmed to Cricinfo on Thursday that the membership is creating “a brand new devoted T20 identification” for subsequent season onwards.
“Over latest months, Gloucestershire County Cricket Membership has labored carefully with our gamers, our members working group, the ECB, and quite a lot of key stakeholders to assist form an thrilling new chapter in our evolution,” the membership instructed Cricinfo in an announcement.
“Constructing on greater than 150 years of proud heritage, Gloucestershire Cricket will all the time stay our overarching identification and the inspiration of the whole lot we do.
“As a part of our wider strategic imaginative and prescient to develop home cricket, entice new audiences throughout the area, and drive business reinvestment again into the game, we will likely be creating a brand new devoted T20 identification for our males’s and ladies’s groups.”
The membership will maintain one other assembly with members in Cheltenham on Thursday evening, and can launch their “full imaginative and prescient” later this 12 months to coincide with the discharge of subsequent 12 months’s home schedule.
Bristol has a pupil inhabitants of round 70,000, however Gloucestershire have typically struggled to draw followers to their Blast dwelling video games. The membership hopes {that a} change in identification will enhance consciousness of the membership and enhance ticket gross sales.
Bristol can also be dwelling to 2 Soccer League golf equipment – Bristol Metropolis and Bristol Rovers – and the boys’s and ladies’s Bristol Bears rugby union groups, whose crowds have grown steadily in latest seasons.
Gloucestershire have been beforehand referred to as ‘Gloucestershire Gladiators’ in one-day and T20 cricket from 1999 till 2013, once they dropped the nickname and reverted to their normal county identify.
Gloucestershire’s males gained the Blast in 2024 and have been overwhelmed quarter-finalists final season, shedding to eventual champions Northamptonshire, whereas their semi-professional girls’s staff misplaced the ‘League Two’ remaining to Glamorgan. It was in any other case a difficult 2026 summer time for the membership, which noticed the boys’s staff completed backside within the County Championship.
Gloucestershire’s monetary place has improved significantly in recent times, and the membership grew to become debt-free final 12 months due to the proceeds from the sale of stakes within the eight Hundred franchises.
Matt Curler is a senior correspondent at Cricinfo. @mroller98