New Delhi, Mar 20 (PTI) The world cricket’s ecosystem is slowly seeing a paradigm shift towards franchise cricket and the entry of Indian Premier League franchises in the United States through the inaugural edition of Major League Cricket (MLC) could be a significant step in that direction.
With Kolkata Knight Riders (Los Angeles), Chennai Super Kings (Texas), Mumbai Indians (New York) and Delhi Capitals (Seattle Orcas) taking ownership or making significant investments in four of the six franchises (the other two being Washington Freedom and San Francisco Unicorns), the cricketing landscape is going to change forever.
Even the two franchises which don’t have IPL investments are also owned by persons of Indian origin. San Francisco Unicorns’ top investors are Venture Capitalists Venky Hariharan and Anand Rajaraman, who have got Australian state side Victoria on board.
Washington Freedom is owned by Indian American Sanjay Govil along with New South Wales state cricket body from Australia. Not to forget Seattle has Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella as one of the investors.
But the IPL franchises are now expanding their bouquet of teams across leagues in the West Indies, UAE, South Africa and now US is another untapped market that wasn’t being explored for a long time despite the Asian diaspora craving for some regular cricket show at least once a year.
On Monday, early morning India time (Sunday night in Houston), the likes of former Australia captain Aaron Finch (San Francisco), Quinton de Kock (Seattle Orcas), a former South African skipper and even now a batting mainstay, premier pacer Anrich Nortje (Washington), Sri Lanka’s top T20 freelancer Wanindu Hasaranga (Washington), dashing all-rounders Mitchell Marsh (Seattle) and Marcus Stoinis (SF Unicorns) are the first lot of quality internationals picked up by ‘Draft System’, which is a Major League thing.
In major US sports like basketball, baseball, there are no auctions held and only the draft picks, and hence that has been followed by the Major League Cricket as well.
“A private cricket league in the US is very different from private leagues in, say the UAE or South Africa. But in terms of revenue model, I expect the MLC to be much more successful in coming years,” said Hemant Dua, former CEO of erstwhile Delhi Daredevils, who has worked in franchise business model of sport for years.
Dua, then explained why USA has potential to be successful.
“Building infrastructure is the least of the problems in the US. Also, the Asian diaspora that (Indians, Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Sri Lankans) comprises of people with more white-collared jobs and more disposable income than majority of the Asian diaspora in the UAE.
“Plus the UAE league is more dependant on international players but Indians in US will support their locals too. You need to factor in all these issues. One thing what MLC organisers need to look at is Indian audience timings to garner greater broadcast revenue.” We might see more retirements in future in India ================================= The club versus country debate has been raging for some time. The BCCI doesn’t allow its active cricketers to play any other leagues apart from IPL but the start of Major League Cricket in US could see a lot of domestic retirements in India because of the propensity to migrate to the US.
Take the case of Unmukt Chand and Milind Kumar, who have found takers in the inaugural season after chucking their domestic cricket careers in India, which wasn’t going anywhere.
“If you are not ensured earning of at least 15 crore from IPL in five years, or you aren’t a top-line India international with endorsements and Rs 50-crore plus earnings, why would you stay back?” an IPL franchise source told
Source: PTI News
