Meet the billionaires who are counting on an American cricket league

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani and other deep-pocketed investors worth a combined $126 billion own franchises in Major League Cricket. But launching a new major sports league in the United States has long been a thorny issue.

_{By means of Sofia Chierchio}, _Contributor

In a crowded cricket stadium in Bangalore, India, as the Indian Premier League prepared for its first match in April 2008, Anurag Jain gazed out onto the owner’s balcony as a familiar Hindi song whipped up the throngs of fans present. “One day, I want to play that song and stand on the balcony like that man,” he recalled saying. “It wasn’t about vanity; it was about bringing this sport that my family and friends enjoyed together.” [America]my house.

In India, cricket is widely considered the most popular sport in the country, both in terms of participation and television ratings. But as successful as it has been in the United Kingdom and other former British colonies, the sport has barely made headway in the United States. But Jain, 62, chairman of Access Healthcare, a Dallas-based health care company, and a group of deep-pocketed investors including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani, Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan and Jain’s co-owner, Texas real estate developer Ross Perot Jr., are betting they can finally change that.

In 2019, American Cricket Enterprises (ACE), the San Francisco-based parent company of Major League Cricket (MLC), pledged $1 billion to develop the sport in the U.S. Three years later, MLC secured $120 million in funding. With just six teams (New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Seattle, Texas and Washington, D.C.), the inaugural 2023 season drew around 70,000 fans to matches, generating a very modest $8 million in revenue. With the second season, which kicked off on July 5, MLC is looking to capitalize on the growing global interest in the sport, which was bolstered by Team USA’s surprise victory over Pakistan in the Mens T20 Cricket World Cup in June.

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“We’re very serious as a collective,” says former Microsoft executive Sanjay Parthasarathy, who co-owns Seattle Orcas with Nadella. “We’re seasoned business people. So we have a discipline, a business discipline. We run this like a startup. We’re frugal with the money. We have to invest in the right places, so we’re certainly not throwing money around.”

MLC’s backers, many of whom are of Indian descent, don’t have to look far to find a model for success. The Indian Premier League (IPL), founded in 2008, revolutionized cricket by adopting the T20 format, a shorter, more dynamic version of the game. Traditional cricket matches can last days, but T20 cricket condensed the action into three and a half hours of high-energy play, making it more appealing to a wider audience. And the value of IPL clubs has soared in recent years, with the average value of the league’s 10 teams set to surpass $1 billion by 2022, according to the latest valuations from Forbes.

And just as Major League Soccer had to contend with the fact that American soccer fans could already watch the world's best leagues in the United States, the MLC must compete with a fan base that already follows IPL matches on Willow TV, the premier cricket channel in the US.

The Commonwealth Diaspora has always viewed sports differently than the core American audience, Parthasarathy says of the TV challenges. There is an intersection between the diaspora and the hardcore American sports, so there are a lot of opportunities to tap into. That’s the core; it doesn’t mean we end there.

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According to some owners, the goal for this season is simply to build on the product that debuted last year. The league also has a five-year broadcast partnership with Willow, which is its biggest source of revenue. MLC also generates revenue from ticket sales and sponsorships, which is a page out of the Formula 1 handbook. One of the biggest sources of revenue is the logos that are put on our shirts, says Jain. In fact, I think we are the first team to sell out all of our logo spaces this year, which I think is a great achievement.

But for cricket to succeed in America, a huge investment in infrastructure is needed. Veteran Silicon Valley venture capitalist Anand Rajaraman, co-owner of the San Francisco Unicorns, estimates that a single purpose-built stadium in the Bay Area would cost at least $30 million.

You need to have world-class places where people can train and play, Parthasarathy emphasises. You can’t play on a baseball field because one of the big aspects of cricket is the pitch. It has to be done right and done right. Those facilities are really important and I see that happening in the next 10 years.

In addition to stadium infrastructure, many MLC owners believe that attracting a wider cricket audience goes hand in hand with cultivating domestic talent. According to MLC rules, of the 11 cricketers on the field, at least five must be American players. Sanjay Govil, founder of Maryland-based Infinite Computer Solutions and owner of Washington Freedom, believes this strategy allows local talent to learn from some of the best international coaches and players.

Cricket is expected to get another major boost when it makes its Olympic return in 2028 after a 128-year hiatus. The increased attention will be focused in Los Angeles and could be monumental for the growth of the new competition.

I think it is extremely important that the world sees cricket at that stage, asserts Jain. You will see cricket grow through the Olympics, but the most important thing for us is that it comes here, it comes to our country.

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