Can Cricket Become America’s Next Major Sport?
Huddle Up is a 3x weekly newsletter that breaks down the business and money behind sports. If you are not already a subscriber, sign up and join 100,000+ others who receive it directly in their inbox each week. Today At A Glance:Cricket has 2.5 billion fans worldwide and is the world’s second-most popular sport. But with baseball stealing its thunder in the United States over the last 100+ years, the sport is looking to make a comeback. So today’s newsletter breaks down the individuals that raised $120 million to fund Major League Cricket (MLC) and why it might actually work. This newsletter is also available via podcast on Apple or Spotify. Enjoy! Friends, Last month, thousands of sports fans attended a sold-out stadium in North Texas. They waited several hours to enter the venue in 100° sweltering heat. Some traveled thousands of miles from states like California, Florida, and New York. And the atmosphere was described as “electric,” despite some fans not knowing the rules. But this wasn’t a football game. Fans weren’t attending a soccer match. And you’d be wrong if you guessed basketball, baseball, tennis, rugby, or lacrosse. That’s because it was the first-ever Major League Cricket match in the United States. And with billions of fans worldwide and financial backing from some of America’s most influential tech executives, Major League Cricket might just be getting started.
Cricket has a long and complex history in the United States. The sport originated in the early 17th century in southeast England and was played by British colonists in North America by the start of the 18th century. Haverford College formed the first cricket team in 1833. Then, the University of Pennslyvania, Harvard, Princeton, Cornell, and Columbia joined Haverford to form The Intercollegiate Cricket Association — and the sport began to take off. But while cricket started being exported to other parts of the globe during the early 19th-century colonization, namely India, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, the sport didn’t see the same outcome in the United States. That’s because a variation of the sport called baseball (!) was quicker and simpler — traditional cricket games are played over five days and require a specially prepared pitch — and it was a game that America could claim as its own. So baseball became known as “America’s National Pastime,” and Cricket disappeared. But the opposite happened in other parts of the world. For example, cricket is now the world’s second-most popular sport after soccer, with 2.5 billion fans from 180 nations. There are nearly 1 billion cricket fans in India (535 million) and China (408 million) alone. And the sport’s biggest star, Virat Kohli, has 256 million Instagram followers, which is more followers than LeBron James (155 million), Serena Williams (17 million), Roger Federer (12 million), Shohei Ohtani (6 million), Patrick Mahomes (6 million), and Tiger Woods (3 million) combined. Most Followed Instagram Account By Sport
But even with baseball becoming one of America’s four major sports leagues, immigrants from cricket-crazed countries have turned America into the world’s third-biggest cricket market, with 63 million people engaging with the sport annually. Cricket’s Biggest Markets (via SponsorPulse)
And now Major League Cricket wants to turn that attention into enterprise value. The US-based cricket league has raised $120 million in funding from people like Satya Nadella (Microsoft CEO) and Shantanu Narayen (Adobe CEO). They play a shortened version of cricket called T20, producing more hits and scoring in games that last just three hours. And in addition to stadium renovations in Texas and North Carolina, MLC investor (and Bollywood actor) Shah Rukh Khan is committing funds as part of a $30 million investment to build a 10,000-seat cricket stadium in the Los Angeles area. But most importantly, USA Cricket awarded Major League Cricket the exclusive license to run a professional T20 league in the United States. That means no other entity can set up a professional cricket league in the United States, effectively providing MLC with a monopoly on investment and fan attention for the sport.
And the first Major League Cricket season went well. It lasted less than a month, and there were only 18 regular-season games. But every game was sold out, and the shorter season made it so some of the world’s best players could compete in the league, which enabled Major League Cricket to sign global broadcasting deals in year one. MLC Broadcast Partners
So while there is unquestionably a long way to go before we consider cricket a legitimate player in the American sports landscape, the seeds have been planted. Major League Cricket already has a built-in fanbase of 60 million-plus people in the United States. They have raised more than enough money ($120 million) to fund the operation for several years at a loss. And with the expat community of South Asian and Indian Americans increasing year-over-year, the future looks bright for MLC. If you enjoyed this breakdown, please share it with your friends. I hope everyone has a great day. We’ll talk on Wednesday. Listen to the Joe Pomp Show on Apple or Spotify. Interested in advertising with Huddle Up? Email me. Your feedback helps me improve Huddle Up. How did you like today’s post? Loved | Great | Good | Meh | Bad Huddle Up is a 3x weekly newsletter that breaks down the business and money behind sports. If you are not already a subscriber, sign up and join 100,000+ others who receive it directly in their inbox each week. Huddle Up is free today. But if you enjoyed this post, you can tell Huddle Up that their writing is valuable by pledging a future subscription. You won’t be charged unless they enable payments.
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