Women's Big Bash League
The Women's Big Bash League, also known as Weber WBBL for sponsorship reasons, is a professional Women's Twenty20 cricket league in Australia. Established in 2015, it replaced the Australian Women's Twenty20 Cup, which ran from 2009–10 season to 2014–15. The competition features eight city-based franchises and is branded identically to the Big Bash League. Originally running alongside the BBL, the tournament was held in December to February before moving to a standalone schedule for the 2019–20 season onwards. It has since been held sometime between October and December. It is regarded as having "changed the landscape of women's cricket" and was the first domestic T20 franchise competition for women.
The collective performance of the Sydney Sixers and the Sydney Thunder in the league's initial years—combining for four titles in the first six seasons—has partially echoed the dominance of New South Wales in the Women's National Cricket League, the 50-over counterpart of the WBBL, though neither have won a title since the 2020–21 season. The current champions are the Hobart Hurricanes, who won the 2025–26 season after defeating the Perth Scorchers by 8 wickets in the final.
History
Women's International Cricket League
In early 2014, the formation of an international women's Twenty20 competition, based around the franchise model of the Indian Premier League was announced. Headed by former Australian cricketer Lisa Sthalekar and Australian businessman Shaun Martyn, the proposal involved six privately owned Singapore-based teams with players earning over $US40,000 per season.There was strong support from top female players for the Women's International Cricket League concept, and backing was sought from the International Cricket Council, while former international cricketers Geoff Lawson and Clive Lloyd were on the board of the organisation.
The concept was dealt a blow in early June, when the England and Wales Cricket Board announced that they would refuse to release centrally contracted English players. At the same time, Cricket Australia announced it would not endorse the WICL either. Both organisations expressed concern that the tournament was not being run by a national cricket board, but a private company.
Australian Women's Twenty20 Cup
Before the establishment of the Women's Big Bash League, Cricket Australia conducted a national T20 competition: the Australian Women's Twenty20 Cup. The tournament ran in conjunction with the WNCL with the final played as a double header alongside the KFC Twenty20 Big Bash and later the Big Bash League. The competition ran from the 2009–10 season to 2014–15 after some exhibition games were held from 2007 to 2009.Cricket Australia decided to replace the competition with the Women's Big Bash League in an attempt to further heighten the profile and professionalism of elite-level female cricket, thereby ideally helping to grow grassroots participation and viewership of the game among girls and women across the country.
Establishment
On 19 January 2014, former Australian national team captain Belinda Clark revealed the planning for a women's BBL was in its early stages, with CA keen to take advantage of the rising popularity of women's cricket and the success of the men's BBL in its first season on free-to-air TV. On 19 February 2015, Cricket Australia announced that a Women's Big Bash League would commence in 2015–16, with teams aligned to the current men's competition. Each team's first player signing was unveiled at the official WBBL launch on 10 July 2015.Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland stated in a media release: "We see T20 as the premium format of the women's game and the WBBL is an exciting concept that will increase the promotion and exposure of women's cricket." He went on to claim: "Our existing female domestic competitions are arguably the strongest in the world, with the continued success of the top-ranked women's team, the Southern Stars, a testament to that." Cricket Australia executive Mike McKenna said: "Our goal is to see cricket become the sport of choice for women and girls across the nation, whether as participants or fans."
On 13 October 2015, 100 of Australia's elite cricketers joined to pledge $20 million towards the growth of cricket in Australia, to help grassroots level Cricket, support former players and develop further opportunities for female cricketers.
Teams
The competition features the same eight city-based franchises that make up the Big Bash League. Each state's capital city features at least one team, with Sydney and Melbourne featuring two. The Sydney Thunder, the Sydney Sixers and the Brisbane Heat have each won two of the first six championships. The disproportionate success achieved by the two teams based in New South Wales, i.e. the Thunder and the Sixers, vaguely mirrors the historical dominance of the New South Wales Breakers in the Women's National Cricket League. The Sixers reached four finals throughout the first six seasons—twice as many as any other team—while producing the best overall win–loss record, and various media outlets have described them as the "glamour team" of the league.Although the Melbourne Renegades and Melbourne Stars both use CitiPower Centre as their primary ground, they have historically differed in their choice of secondary grounds. The Renegades have hosted fixtures at regional venues west of Melbourne, such as Kardinia Park and Eastern Oval, while the Stars have occasionally played home games at Casey Fields in Melbourne's south-east. A similar arrangement exists for the Sydney teams: the Thunder typically play home games at venues in the city's west while the Sixers tend to use grounds in the east, though both teams sometimes host fixtures at each other's primary ground due to the competition's "festival" structure which often sees multiple games scheduled at the same venue in a single day.
Since the move to a standalone fixture in 2024–25, the Hobart Hurricanes remain the only team to have the same primary venue as their male counterparts: the 20,000-capacity Ninja Stadium. With women's matches no longer played as double-headers alongside men's matches, the league has shifted away from the country's biggest stadiums, such as the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Adelaide Oval, in favour of smaller and more economically viable grounds. The intimate nature of these venues have been characterised as generating a relaxed and family-friendly atmosphere at WBBL games, which the league's teams have embraced—the Perth Scorchers, for example, have made a habit of encouraging spectators to bring their pet dogs along to matches at Lilac Hill Park.
Media coverage
2015–17
The 2015–16 Women's Big Bash League season was initially scheduled to have eight of the 59 matches air live on Australian free-to-air network One. Impressive television ratings convinced Network Ten to move the broadcast of the first-ever Melbourne derby between the Stars and Renegades to their main channel. The all-Sydney clashes between the Thunder and the Sixers on 2 January and the final on 24 January were likewise upgraded, whilst the broadcast schedule was also expanded to include the two semi-finals on One.Network Ten broadcast eleven games of the 2016–17 Women's Big Bash League season. The commentary team was again led by Andrew Maher and featured Mel Jones and Lisa Sthalekar alongside Jason Bennett and Pete Lazer. Every game was also live streamed via the , and the .
A total of twelve 2017–18 matches were televised on free-to-air by Network Ten, including four on the opening weekend. The remaining 47 matches were live streamed on cricket.com.au, Mamamia and the Cricket Australia Live App.
2018–present
In April 2018, as part of a new six-year broadcast rights deal, Cricket Australia announced 23 matches of each season would be aired live on the Seven Network and simulcast on Fox Sports' dedicated cricket channel Fox Cricket, with the remaining 36 matches to be live streamed on the CA website and app.Ahead of the 2019–20 season, Cricket Australia announced all 59 matches would also be streamed live and on demand through Kayo Sports.
An additional three games were initially allocated TV coverage on the Seven Network and Fox Cricket for the 2020–21 season, taking the overall number of televised WBBL|06 matches to 26. Alistair Dobson, Cricket Australia's Head of Big Bash Leagues, subsequently said: "The Rebel WBBL is the world's best cricket league for women and keeps getting better, which was reflected in a 21 per cent increase in multichannel audiences last season." After the season was rescheduled to take place entirely in a Sydney hub across a concentrated five-week period, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Seven's allocated number of games was altered to a total of 24. On 15 October 2020, Cricket Australia announced Fox Cricket would broadcast an additional twelve matches, bringing the total number of televised WBBL|06 games to 36.
Coverage of the league received another boost for the following season with Fox Cricket broadcasting an additional 23 matches, meaning WBBL07 would be the first time all games would be televised.