Cricket is coming to America. Its Indian backers want a piece of a $125 billion sports betting market – and they may have noticed Americans like hitting balls with bats.
The 13th edition of the Cricket World Cup began yesterday and all eyes of the cricketing world fell on the host country, India, where England is defending a title won in dramatic style in 2019.
So what? Commercially, the World Cup could prove a mere decoy. Earlier this summer, India was focussed on the other side of the world and the launch in the US of the inaugural Major League Cricket (MLC) tournament, the latest attempt to crack cricket in the States.
- Cricket is the world’s second most popular sport, but has never gained a foothold in the US.
- The most lucrative Twenty20 domestic league in world cricket – the Indian Premier League (IPL) – is now worth $10.9 billion, growing 75 per cent in value since 2020.
- So vast rewards await anyone who can unlock a new market in a country of 330 million people.
A long innings. Major League Cricket has been five years in the making. In 2018, USA Cricket officially sought partners who would back a new domestic Twenty20 (T20) league – the short cricketing format that has grown to dominate the sport since its inception in 2003. Initially due to launch in 2021, MLC was delayed for two years by Covid.
Asian roots. All six teams at the inaugural MLC have links to India. Four of the franchises – the Los Angeles Knight Riders, the Mumbai Indians New York (MINY for short), Texas Super Kings, and Seattle Orcas – are owned by Indian conglomerates which also own franchises in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The remaining two franchises – Washington Freedom and San Francisco Unicorns – are owned by Indian Americans.
The league itself was co-founded by Indian Americans Vijay Srinivasan and Sameer Mehta, and two of its principal sponsors – The Times of India and Royal Foods – are based in India.
Green shoots. For relatively little risk, the franchise-owners have a chance to grow cricket in a potentially fertile territory. South Asians make up 92 per cent of global cricket’s fan base, and the South Asian American population has grown from 3.4 million in 2010 to 5.4 million now.
Bet-fueled. It should come as little surprise that the league is “powered by” (read: sponsored by) the gambling company Betway. Americans bet more than $125 billion on sports at legal gambling outlets in the four years after the US Supreme Court ruling cleared the way for all 50 states to allow it in 2018. Cricket attracts the fifth most gambling money in the world.
Home-away. The inaugural MLC season was small – part by design, part by necessity. The competition was squeezed into 20 days to fit it in between more established global tournaments, and the games were played in only two venues – the Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas and Church Street Park in North Carolina.
There are plans for each franchise to build its own stadium, but in the meantime…
- Some afternoon games in Texas – scheduled to appeal to fans watching in India – were played in temperatures upwards of 45 C.
- The lack of dedicated infrastructure creates a marketing and messaging problem: “There are only so many times you can try and tell people with a straight face that the New York franchise – Mumbai Indians New York – is named after Mumbai,” says the American cricket commentator Peter Della Penna. “And it’s even harder to tell them with a straight face, ‘oh, all of their home games are being played in North Carolina and in Texas’.”
Just not cricket. Cricket has been here before, more times than it cares to remember. The Pro Cricket league, the American Premier League, and the American T20 Championship all fell by the wayside between 2004 and 2011, but the momentum now appears to be with the MLC. In 2024 the US will co-host the T20 World Cup with the West Indies, qualifying the American team automatically. USA Cricket, the governing body in America, also wants to include cricket at the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles.
In fact, the history of cricket would not be complete without the US. The Auty Cup – a cricket match first played in 1844 between USA and Canada – is thought to be the first and longest-running international sporting fixture of any type. Major League Cricket has a hard act to follow.
