One Day Cup Family Tickets: Cheap Cricket Days Out

One Day Cup family tickets are the best value in English sport, and it is not close. A family of four can watch a full day of professional 50-over cricket at a county ground for less than the cost of two seats at a Championship football match — often for under £40 all in, and at several counties for the price of the two adult tickets alone, because the children come free. This page explains how family pricing actually works across the eighteen counties, what a day genuinely costs once you have added travel and lunch, which grounds suit young children best, and how to book without getting caught by a resale site.

What family tickets look like at county level

There is no single national family ticket for the One Day Cup. Each county sets its own prices, so the structures vary, but they fall into four recognisable patterns:

Children free with paying adults. The most generous model. Somerset, for example, admit two children under 16 free with two paying adults for both Championship and Metro Bank One Day Cup matches. Where a county offers this, it is almost always the cheapest route and you do not need a separate "family ticket" product at all — you book the adults and add the juniors at zero cost.

A flat junior price. Common, and usually around £5. Sussex price juniors at £5 with a middle youth band at £10 and adults at £20; Yorkshire's early-bird pricing has started from £16 for adults and £5 for juniors. At the final at Trent Bridge, under-16s are £5 anywhere in the ground.

A bundled family ticket. Two adults plus two juniors sold as one product at a discount on the sum of the parts, typically saving a few pounds rather than a fortune. Worth checking against the kids-free and flat-junior options, because it is not always the best deal.

Membership. For anyone going more than three or four times a season, a family or junior membership beats buying match by match, and junior memberships are cheap — some counties charge under £35 for an under-17 for the whole summer.

Because these change every winter, the honest instruction is to open the host county's ticket page before booking rather than trusting any figure, including the ones above. The general shape of pricing across the competition is covered on our One Day Cup 2026 tickets page.

What a family day actually costs

Here is a realistic budget for two adults and two children at a group-stage One Day Cup match, using typical 2026 county pricing rather than a best case.

Item	Kids-free county	Flat junior pricing
Two adult tickets	£30–£40	£30–£40
Two junior tickets	£0	£10
Programme or scorecard	£2–£3	£2–£3
Lunch bought at the ground	£30–£40	£30–£40
Lunch brought from home	£0	£0
Parking or rail	£5–£25	£5–£25
Realistic total	£40–£70	£50–£80

The variable that moves the total most is food, not tickets. At most outgrounds you can bring your own picnic, and at many you can bring a limited amount of alcohol as well — a rule that does not apply at the international grounds. Packing lunch turns a £70 day into a £40 one without changing a thing about the cricket.

The second variable is travel. Two adults and two children on an advance off-peak return can cost more than the tickets, so a Family & Friends Railcard pays for itself on one trip to Scarborough or Cheltenham. If you are driving, the county headquarters grounds have paid car parks that fill early; the outgrounds mostly do not have one at all, and you park in the town and walk.

Which grounds work best with children

The One Day Cup is played in high summer in the same weeks as The Hundred, which pushes many counties out to their outgrounds — and outgrounds are considerably better for young children than stadiums. There is space to move, grass to sit on, a boundary rope to sit against, and nobody minds noise.

Queen's Park in Chesterfield is the clearest example: the cricket sits inside a Victorian municipal park with a boating lake, a bandstand and a play area, so a five-year-old who lasts an hour of cricket has somewhere to go for the second. Cheltenham College, Radlett, Arundel, Beckenham and Guildford all give you the same combination of picnic space and short attention-span escape routes. The full rundown, with nearest stations and what the seating is really like, is on our guide to the best One Day Cup grounds in England.

At the county headquarters grounds — Trent Bridge, Grace Road, New Road, the Riverside, Chelmsford, Taunton — you get proper seats, roofs, reliable toilets and a scoreboard a child can read. That is a real trade-off in changeable weather, and if the forecast is poor a stadium is the safer booking.

Several counties run activities aimed squarely at younger supporters during the competition: Kent's Junior Journo scheme, which gives children the run of a match-day press role, has run through recent One Day Cup campaigns. Others do lunch-interval games on the outfield, meet-the-players sessions and free activity packs at the gate. These are advertised on the county's own site in the week of the game rather than centrally, so it is worth checking before you go.

Memberships and junior schemes

If your family is going more than a couple of times, the maths changes.

• Junior membership is the standout. Several counties charge less for a whole season of under-17 membership than two adult match tickets cost, and it usually includes entry to all Championship and One Day Cup home matches, sometimes with a shirt or a cap.
• Adult membership at a smaller county can run from around £150 to £250 for the season and covers every home day of red-ball and 50-over cricket. Hampshire's early-bird membership, for instance, has been advertised from £220 for adults and around £30 for under-17s.
• Family membership bundles exist at some counties and are worth asking the ticket office about even when they are not on the website.

Membership also gets you round the awkward bit of family planning: with a membership card you can decide on the morning of the match whether the weather is worth the trip, which you cannot do comfortably with £60 of non-refundable tickets in your pocket.

Members typically get priority access to knockout matches too, which matters for the play-offs and semi-finals, where counties often give members a window before general sale. The One Day Cup final tickets guide covers how that works for the September showpiece at Trent Bridge, where non-member adults start around £28 and under-16s are £5.

Accessibility for families

Every county offers free or heavily discounted admission for a personal assistant accompanying a disabled supporter, and designated accessible viewing areas at their main ground. What varies is the outgrounds, where the surfaces are grass, the seating is temporary and the toilets are portable.

The practical advice is the same in all cases and it is worth following: ring the county's ticket office rather than booking online. They will place you somewhere with a sightline and level access, arrange parking as close to the ground as they can, and confirm what the facilities actually are on that site — which no website will tell you accurately for a ground that only exists for a fortnight each summer. Do this at least a few days ahead; on the morning of a match nobody has time.

If a child in your group finds crowds or noise difficult, the One Day Cup is the friendliest competition in the calendar for exactly that reason. Group-stage crowds are usually in the hundreds or low thousands, there is no music between overs, and you can move to a quiet corner of the boundary at any point.

Booking safely

Buy from the host county's own website or ticket office, or from the ECB where a match is centrally ticketed. That is the whole rule, and for a competition where an adult ticket is £15 to £20 it is easy to follow.

Two things to watch. First, resale platforms list county fixtures at multiples of face value, and because there are almost never genuine shortages at group matches, anyone paying £60 for a £15 ticket has simply been overcharged. Second, search results sometimes surface unofficial sites with names very close to a county's — check that the domain is the club's own before entering card details.

You can generally pay on the gate for group matches, which removes the risk entirely, but confirm first: festival fixtures at Scarborough, Cheltenham and Sedbergh do sell out, and knockout matches are advance-sale. If tickets are gone, every county streams its home matches free, and the routes for following the competition from home are set out in how to watch the One Day Cup in 2026.

Refund policy on a rained-off day is set by each county and is usually generous — many offer a full refund or a credit if under a set number of overs are bowled — but it is a policy you should read before booking rather than after.

Making a full day work with children

Fifty-over cricket runs from 11.00am to about 6.30pm. Almost no child will watch all of it, and the day works far better if you plan for that from the start.

• Arrive for the toss, not before. An extra hour at the ground before play is an hour of a child's patience spent for nothing.
• Use the innings break. It is roughly forty-five minutes, most grounds allow children onto the outfield or run games, and it is the natural point to eat.
• Bring a scorecard. Giving a seven-year-old the job of recording the score converts boredom into an activity, and counties still sell paper scorecards for a couple of pounds.
• Bring a chair or a rug, sun cream and a waterproof. There is little covered seating at outgrounds and an English August will offer sun and rain in the same afternoon.
• Leave when they have had enough. Nobody checks. The cricket will still be on the county's stream when you get home.

Because squads are weakened by The Hundred, the players on show are often teenagers a few years older than the children watching — which makes autographs after play far more attainable here than at an international. Most counties are relaxed about a queue by the players' entrance at the close. Why the teams look the way they do is explained on the One Day Cup 2026 groups and teams page.

Frequently asked questions

Do children go free to One Day Cup matches?

At some counties, yes — Somerset admit two under-16s free with two paying adults, and several others run similar offers. Where children are not free, junior tickets are typically around £5. It varies by county, so check the host club's ticket page.

How much is a family day out at the One Day Cup?

Budget £40 to £80 for two adults and two children including a programme and lunch, depending on whether the county runs a kids-free offer and whether you bring a picnic. Tickets themselves are usually £30 to £40 for the two adults.

Are One Day Cup family tickets available for the final?

The Trent Bridge final is priced separately, with under-16s at £5 anywhere in the ground and adult tickets from around £28, rather than as a bundled family product. Nottinghamshire members get the first window when tickets go on sale.

Is a county membership cheaper than buying family tickets?

If you go more than three or four times a season, usually yes, and junior memberships in particular are very cheap. Membership also lets you decide on the morning whether the weather is worth the journey.

Can I bring my own food to a One Day Cup match?

At most outgrounds and county grounds, yes, and often a limited amount of alcohol too. The rules are set by each county and are stricter at the international venues, so check the ground regulations page before you pack the cool box.

Which One Day Cup grounds are best for young children?

The park and school outgrounds — Queen's Park Chesterfield, Cheltenham College, Radlett, Arundel, Beckenham — because there is space to move and somewhere to go when attention fades. The headquarters grounds are the better bet if rain is forecast.

Can I buy One Day Cup tickets on the day at the gate?

Usually for group matches, but not for knockout ties and not reliably for the festival fixtures at Scarborough, Cheltenham or Sedbergh. Book ahead for those.

One Day Cup family tickets in England exist because counties genuinely want children at these matches — it is the competition where the crowd is small, the players are young and the ground is a field with a rope round it. Book direct, pack a picnic, take a chair, and it is the cheapest good day out in British sport. For the season's schedule see the 2026 fixtures, for the competition's background the guide to the One Day Cup, and for tickets across the rest of the summer the England cricket tickets buying guide or the England cricket hub.