Plan to develop cricket’s biggest untapped market: the US

The next 12 months are likely to be crucial for what is widely considered cricket’s greatest untapped market.

USA Cricket boss Iain Higgins says the time is right to develop the US market

The next 12 months are likely to be crucial for what is widely considered cricket’s greatest untapped market.

ICC planning for the scheduling of major tournaments from 2023 to 2031, which was last year hindered by the pandemic, must shortly be resolved and all eyes will be on the staging bids from USA Cricket in conjunction with Cricket West Indies. Research suggests that there are up to 20 million fans of the sport in the US, many from among the large Asian diaspora.

“It is widely recognised at the ICC and around the world of cricket that the single biggest non-traditional cricket market that could be developed in the short to medium term is the USA,” said Iain Higgins, the USA Cricket chief executive and a former ICC chief operating officer. “It also happens to be the biggest sports market and sports media market in the world, and one of the countries with the biggest number of cricket fans and people who play cricket.

“USA Cricket and Cricket West Indies (CWI) have agreed that we will jointly bid for a number of ICC major events during that period (2023-31), including a men’s and women’s World T20. We have expressed our interest to ICC.”

Circumstances are right now in a way they were not previously, when USA Cricket’s predecessor body, the USA Cricket Association, was expelled from ICC for maladministration and trust needed rebuilding in the US cricket community.

This is why steps are advanced in setting up the country’s first professional T20 league, Major League Cricket. It is planned to start in 2022 and involve six teams with five overseas stars each and drawing on the passion for the game in areas such as Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Florida, Atlanta and Texas.

American Cricket Enterprises, the parent body of the MLC, has taken a long-term lease on a vacant baseball stadium at Grand Prairie, west of Dallas, which, it is intended, will act as a base for national teams and a performance centre, as well as home to a Texas franchise in the MLC with a turf field and 10,000-seat capacity.

Shortly before Christmas, ACE revealed a list of more than 20 founding investors, what it described as “an all-star roster of leading business executives and successful tech entrepreneurs”.

But the most significant backer emerged last month when the Knight Riders Group, which owns Kolkata Knight Riders, one of the richest teams in the IPL, and Trinbago Knight Riders in the Caribbean Premier League, agreed to become a major stakeholder.

Importantly, KRG’s portfolio of businesses includes The Times of India and Willow TV, which broadcasts cricket and has four million subscribers in the US.

“For the first time, all of the right people, partnerships and relationships are in place for USA Cricket to move forward,” Higgins said. “There have been efforts to launch leagues in the US in the past but I don’t think they were built on a solid foundation or that there was unity across the world of cricket that this was a project worth taking on.”

Incoming ICC chairman Greg Barclay echoed these sentiments in some of his earliest remarks last year, saying: “The US appears to be the place to go. It (cricket) has a massive advantage in that its traditional audiences from subcontinental Asia have massive diaspora in North America and there are large audiences there for cricket.”

Two weeks ago, the US was named hosts of men’s and women’s regional ICC qualifying events.

CWI chief executive Johnny Grave said: “This feels different. (USA Cricket have) got a serious new board and their chairman (Paraag Marathe) is one of the top guys at the San Francisco 49ers. They’ve got American sports people and cricket people too. It bodes well.”

At the moment, there is a stark difference between the ambitions for the US to become a host venue for major cricket and its lowly abilities as a playing force. It has ambitions to become a full member of the ICC, with the emphasis on short formats rather than Tests, but standards remain modest in a country that possesses only 30 turf pitches. The men’s national team were dismissed for 35 by Nepal in an ODI last year.

But the advent of a T20 league that mixes overseas stars with local talent has the capacity to change that.

The Sunday Times