Batting heroics from Steve Smith and Usman Khawaja, David Warner’s return and huge crowds in Perth and Adelaide have helped the Big Bash League turn the corner back to growth - making Seven and Foxtel’s rights contract look like a bargain deal.

Cricket Australia’s investment in getting Smith and Warner back to the BBL in particular has reaped plenty of benefits, including the most competitive tussle between the Twenty20 league and the Australian Open tennis in some years.

But the health of the competition - likely to build again in future years when the league pulls back to 10 games per club in a search of quality over quantity - may leave some to wonder whether Seven and Foxtel’s cut-price deal for CA’s rights was sealed too hastily.

OzTam figures compiled across the 12th edition of the BBL show that in purely linear television terms, the tournament has recorded a 3.2 per cent uplift on last season, while Foxtel’s streaming service Kayo has experienced a booming 40 per cent audience rise.

These numbers defy a widespread downward trend in broadcast audiences for the likes of AFL and tennis, each the beneficiaries of big money rights deals in recent years.

Combined audiences across Seven, Foxtel and streaming have regularly sat in the 850-900,000 range, while Friday night’s opening BBL final between the Sydney Thunder and Brisbane Heat managed to out-rate the tennis for national audience share without including streaming.

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Audiences for the BBL trended up in the closing week of January up against the tennis, most likely aided by Smith’s pyrotechnics in scoring consecutive hundreds to blast the Sydney Sixers into second spot on the ladder.

The Australian Open rights deal, inked by Nine (publisher of this masthead) in November, is worth around $85 million a season. By contrast, Seven’s portion of the $1.5 billion deal shared with Foxtel is just $65 million a season for the BBL and WBBL, men’s Tests and women’s internationals.