UP535 Inside Edge - T20's Product-Market fit is 'the biggest delta in global sport'

24 Feb 2026 · 1 h 2 min · 32 chapters

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Unofficial Partner Podcast - Episode UP535 Summary

Episode Overview

  • Title: UP535 Inside Edge - T20's Product-Market fit is 'the biggest delta in global sport'
  • Description: This episode explores the impact of T20 cricket on the global sports market and examines what other sports can learn from its success.
  • Guests:
  • Finn Bradshaw (Head of Digital, ICC)
  • Edward Fitzgibbon (Managing Director, NYZ Consulting)

Key Themes T20 Cricket as a Product Innovation

  • T20 cricket is highlighted as a pivotal innovation in sports that has expanded cricket's global reach.
  • The format is compact, accessible, and appeals to a diverse audience, compressing the timeline for developing cricket in non-traditional nations.
  • The current ICC T20 World Cup serves as a proof of concept showcasing lower barriers to entry for associate nations.

Lessons for Other Sports

  • A strong product alone (like T20 cricket) does not guarantee effective governance or engagement with new audiences.
  • Other sports (football, rugby, etc.) face similar challenges in adapting to the global fan landscape.
  • The ICC's approach to T20 cricket presents potential strategies for other sports looking to expand their audience.

Insights from Guests Edward Fitzgibbon

  • Shares experiences from working with ICC and associated cricket leagues, emphasizing the infrastructure needed for cricket's growth.
  • Highlights the significance of passionate fan bases, particularly in emerging markets.
  • Discusses the challenges faced by associate nations in transitioning to higher levels of competition.

Finn Bradshaw

  • Discusses digital engagement strategies at ICC and the increasing social media presence of cricket.
  • Shares data on fan demographics and engagement, noting significant interest from non-traditional cricket markets (e.g., Japan, Germany).
  • Points out the importance of localized content delivery (e.g., language-specific feeds) in engaging international audiences.

Current Landscape of T20 Cricket

  • The rise of associate nations such as Nepal and their competitiveness in the current T20 World Cup raises questions about cricket's evolving landscape.
  • The discussion emphasizes the need for cricket governance to adapt to new dynamics and leverage the growing global interest in cricket.

Challenges and Opportunities Infrastructure Development

  • A critical point raised about cricket infrastructure, particularly in the U.S., where appropriate facilities for cricket are limited.
  • The conversation highlights the need for investment in multi-purpose sports facilities to accommodate cricket.

Market Dynamics in the U.S.

  • The U.S. represents a unique opportunity due to its large, affluent cricket fan base predominantly from South Asian countries.
  • The necessity for cricket to establish a meaningful presence in the U.S. sports market is emphasized, particularly with upcoming events like the T20 World Cup in 2024.

Balancing Tradition and Innovation

  • The episode discusses the tension between traditional formats of cricket and the need for innovation through T20 and franchise leagues.
  • The panel reflects on the importance of creating compelling narratives around players and leagues to foster a deeper connection with fans.

Conclusion

  • The podcast concludes with optimism about cricket's future in America and globally, recognizing the inherent enthusiasm for the sport.
  • The conversation suggests that cricket's potential for growth lies in its ability to adapt to local markets while maintaining its core identity.

Key Takeaways

  • T20 cricket has transformed the sport's reach, particularly in non-traditional markets.
  • There is a significant opportunity for cricket to capitalize on existing fan bases in the U.S. and beyond.
  • Infrastructure development and localized engagement are essential for sustaining growth.
  • The ICC's evolving strategy in digital engagement is a model for other sports leagues facing similar challenges.

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This summary captures the essence of the podcast and provides valuable insights into the conversations that took place during the episode.

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

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Setting the Stage: Current Cricket Landscape

0:45 to 1:56

Discussion on the state of cricket as the ICC World Cup unfolds.

Eddie's Background in Cricket

1:56 to 2:40

Eddie shares his journey and experiences within cricket.

Finn's Role and Digital Strategy

2:40 to 4:25

Finn discusses his digital strategy and the excitement around associate teams.

“Always been a kind of cricket fan, but my big break was when I got the job at the ICC.”

The Passion of Associate Nations

4:25 to 6:51

Exploration of the engagement and passion of associate nations' fans.

“well there's obviously a load in there and i just throw in i'm really enjoying your output your Substack and LinkedIn stuff.”

The Value of T20 in Cricket Development

6:51 to 9:50

Discussion on how T20 cricket serves as a gateway for emerging nations.

“But it sort of feels like the strategy's delivering at the moment.”

The Evolution of Associate Cricket Competitiveness

9:50 to 13:52

Examining the changing landscape and competitiveness of associate cricket.

“It was to prepare them for test cricket.”

Final Thoughts and Future of Cricket

13:52 to 14:02

Reflections on the future trajectory of cricket and its global impact.

“So what's happened in the last three to four years that has meant that previously I would watch a group stage game at a 2020 World Cup.”

The Evolution of Associate Cricket

14:02 to 15:00

Explore how the performance of associate teams has improved over time.

Factors Contributing to Performance Gains

15:01 to 17:10

Discuss the skills, coaching, and tactical understanding enhancing associate teams.

“Yeah, I think it's interesting maybe like there's a lot of hand-wringing about franchise cricket, but it probably has spread tactics, coaching and so on to a lower level below it.”

Nepal's Cricket Journey: Challenges and Triumphs

17:11 to 19:55

Learn about Nepal's cricket evolution and the factors that fueled their growth.

“so perhaps we could use them as an example.”
Show all 32 chapters

The Unique Case of Nepalese Cricket

19:56 to 21:25

Uncover what sets Nepal apart from other associate teams in cricket.

“And he's the general secretary of CAN now and leading on the Nepal Premier League.”

Understanding the Global Cricket Audience

21:26 to 24:03

Analyze the audience dynamics and reach of cricket globally.

“And Finn, to your point about where the audiences are for cricket and then where the product is mainly pointing.”

Innovations in Cricket Broadcasting

24:04 to 27:06

Examine how digital streaming and languages enhance cricket viewership.

“We're roughly 2x our last T20 World Cup in America.”

Implications of Cricket Data Analysis

27:07 to 28:01

Discuss the impact of audience data on cricket governance and decisions.

The Implications of Data on Cricket Governance

28:01 to 29:18

Explore the impact of broadcasting data on cricket's governance and growth.

“I think that it's like what the ICC have done with ICC TV, and I don't know if that was yours, Finn, but that was absolute game changer.”

Democratizing Access to Cricket

29:19 to 31:09

Discuss the importance of access to cricket for youth and infrastructure development.

“And the what's next is what I've been thinking about and talking to many associates about as well, is around infrastructure and your youth and schools programs.”

Fan Segmentation and Global Revenue Opportunities

31:10 to 33:19

Analyze how cricket can better commercialize its global fan base.

“And I know that's happening and it's going to take a long time, but that's the next thing for me.”

Franchise Leagues: Opportunities and Challenges

33:20 to 35:35

Examine the role of franchise leagues in providing opportunities for players.

“It's very difficult to follow who's playing where.”

The ICC's Role and the Meaning of Competition

35:36 to 37:58

Understand the ICC's regulatory role and the significance of meaningful competitions.

“this is cricket's diplomacy problem, isn't it?”

The Future of Associate Players and Leagues

37:59 to 41:34

Discuss pathways for associate players and the rise of second-tier leagues.

“i think where hopefully we'd sort of starting to get to as you get more aligned incentives across the board and then hopefully the outcomes flow from that.”

Exploring Cricket's Potential in America

41:35 to 42:00

Investigate the gap between opportunity and reality for cricket in the USA.

“as we say, associate players, get more exposure through their national team leagues and through that relationships with other associate leagues that come up.”

Cricket's Potential in the US

42:00 to 43:10

Exploration of cricket's growth potential in the United States, referencing insights from Peter Hutton.

“We had Peter Hutton on, who was the head of sport at Facebook Meta for an interesting period of time.”

Historical Cricket Events in America

43:10 to 44:45

Discussion on past cricket events in the US and their impacts on fan engagement and interest.

“Yeah, and I've been rolling that one out for probably since, really since 2015 when I did the Cricket All-Stars event.”

Emerging Cricket Interest and Data Insights

44:45 to 46:29

Analysis of current data indicating rising interest in cricket among American sports fans.

“So fast forward that with the World Cup and all the rest that have happened, there's serious interest from American sports business people, American sports investors in the game of cricket in the US.”

Challenges of Cricket in America

46:29 to 48:10

Identifying the challenges cricket faces in gaining mainstream acceptance in the US sports culture.

“But it says to me, like, we just keep getting these signals that there's this really committed cricket fan base in the US.”

Infrastructure and Access for Cricket

48:10 to 50:25

Discussion on the necessity of proper infrastructure for cricket to thrive in the US and potential solutions.

“Northeast, like particularly around like New York, Brooklyn, and then out to New Jersey.”

Commercialization and Venue Challenges

50:25 to 52:09

Exploration of the commercialization of cricket venues and the need for strategic planning.

“And generally, the Americans are just like, you're trying to do what?”

Cricket's Passionate Fan Base

52:09 to 55:20

Insight into the passionate cricket fan base in the US and the need for better engagement from governing bodies.

“And if we wait until there's a really nice cricket stadium built, is it going to be too late?”

Cricket as a Lifelong Passion

55:20 to 56:00

Discussion on the lifelong commitment of cricket fans and their engagement with the sport.

Understanding Cricket's Fan Base in the US

56:00 to 57:09

Explore the current landscape of cricket fandom in the US and the potential for growth.

“Number one is the current cricket fan, the big cricket fan has been described in the US, is around 6 to 8 million real cricket fans.”

Opportunities and Challenges for Cricket in the US

57:10 to 58:27

Discuss the business opportunities for cricket in the US sports market and how to attract new fans.

“and bring in more World Cups and expand the MLC and bring RPL teams over and things like that.”

Cricket's Cultural Relevance and Market Strategy

58:28 to 1:01:19

Delve into the cultural relevance of cricket in America and the importance of nuanced marketing strategies.

“the women's national team falling really well.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:00Finn Bradshaw:We just keep getting these signals that there's this really committed cricket fan base in the US and the cricket ecosystem as a whole just refuses to give them a product.

0:10Richard:Hello, Richard Gillis here. Welcome to Unofficial Partner, the sports business podcast. We're talking the business of cricket on Inside Edge this week with Mike Jakeman. We've got two guests, Finn Bradshaw, who is head of digital at the ICC, the cricket governing body, and Ed Fitzgibbon who used to work at the ICC and is now a cricket advisor across the franchise world there's a particular expertise in the associate nations he writes a very good sub state should give him a follow so we are in the middle of the ICC 2020 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka and there's a strange feeling to the early rounds and that feeling is uncertainty there's jeopardy at play fear almost England felt it against Nepal in the early rounds Pakistan were run close by the Netherlands USA had defending champions India 77 for 6 and that's before we mention Australia who've already gone home why what's happening we could call it the rise of the associates but there's more to it than that and it's a great case study of lots of different conversations that we have a lot on unofficial partner about the globalized fan for sport and how the product and the structure and the governing bodies are responding to that 2020 is probably the best new product development in sport over the last 20 years it's created a new audience but are they in the right place and is the structure and the governance of the game doing all it can to engage with those new fans it's something that football rugby NFL NBA they are all wrestling with this question and cricket and this tournament in particular is posing some really interesting questions that I think are relevant across the board if you enjoy this sort of stuff you should head over to unofficialpartner.com which has been excitingly revamped and you can also get your substat newsletter that arrives in your inbox at least once a week.

1:55Richard:I'm Richard Gillis and welcome to Unofficial Partner.

2:06Finn Bradshaw:You timed this perfectly.

2:08Richard:I was going to say that this was going to be an interesting conversation to start with and it's like we've planned this and you know we're responding to events in real time but it has been pretty extraordinary I want to just before we get into it and there's so much to to talk about and thank you because I know it's you know a busy time for everyone and and we're right in the middle of the tournament I want to start with Eddie because I know Mike and I know Finn let's get a bit of background on you Eddie just to frame you for the listener because it's varied and it's really interesting give us a like a 30 second bio

2:39Mike Jakeman:Yeah, sure. Always been a kind of cricket fan, but my big break was when I got the job at the ICC. I think Finn just started just after myself, but I was effectively running all the development events manager. So running all the pathway events and programs for everyone from Ireland down through to, at the time, World Cricket League 8, which got held in Samoa. So the whole kind of ecosystem of who qualified and how, I ran all of those events, including two World Cup qualifiers. So that was kind of my ICC. Then, fortunate enough to move to the US, I moved to New York. So my wife was at Emirates in Dubai.

3:17Mike Jakeman:I got a promotion, moved to New York. I was like, what the hell am I going to do with myself? Cricket's not a thing in the US. I was applying for jobs left, right and centre in the US sport. And they're like, cricket? No chance. Fortunately enough, timing, the Cricket All-Stars came across my desk, which if you guys remember was played in the baseball stadiums, war one versus tendal car city field dodger stadium minute made park incredible experience i kind of ran the cricket operations for that and then worked a couple years with cpl when they came into the us in florida i was one of the early kind of consultants for who got the major league cricket right so i kind of wrote much of the strategy for major league cricket then i've moved back to to oz due to covid and i've stayed very close to us cricket which i'm happy to kind to speak on i've been working with the group out of the us for the last four years called kinsman group who have just got a quite a psl franchise as of a couple of days ago a cpl franchise to expand kind of the american footprint as well as on being on the board of wisdom and being a general still associate uh cricket ball so yeah that's it's probably me brilliant okay and

4:26Richard:well there's obviously a load in there and i just throw in i'm really enjoying your output your Substack and LinkedIn stuff. That's really interesting. Finn, you are, thanks for joining us, Finn, because you are right. Where are you? I imagine you're in the epicentre.

4:40Finn Bradshaw:Well, I'm in Dubai, actually, because we set up our digital hub to manage all the technology and whatever here. Just makes things a lot easier. But obviously, I've got a fair team on the ground there, creating all the digital content led by Ben Wise and Sid Rahman, Ravindran. Yeah, plenty of the digital team in India, but I'm here. I'll just do the chairman's hours and fly in for the last couple of matches.

5:06Richard:Before I bring Mike in to ask a question, what's it been like, Finn? Because the story of this podcast will be the sort of associates moment. I don't know how you want to frame it. I've been thinking about a title. It was sort of associate cricket. What the fuck was one option? There's a whole load of things about the people who haven't been following the story and just bump into cricket around the big events have suddenly said, hang on a minute what's going on so what's it been like what just give me a sense of from the digital picture yeah what is it like in terms of how do the associates show up and you've had Nepal as a story you've had all of this going on give us a give us a sense of it yeah it's been

5:47Finn Bradshaw:really exciting we're fortunate we're one of those sports that gets to deal in billions when it comes to social media numbers. But for this tournament, we really sort of set ourselves and our aims of what we wanted to do around being able to sort of prove this momentum around growth in different countries. And that's both in terms of sort of markets, but also sort of passion for different teams and players and things like that. And we've said for a long time, if we could legislate that Nepal played in every ICC tournament, I'd be in the job for life because the Nepal fans are just so passionate.

6:26Finn Bradshaw:And not just when they're in Nepal. We've now got a pretty good idea of where they are in the world from where we see engagement with Nepal matches. But then to sort of go beyond that, the really exciting thing for us is to have seen territories that for a long time we've probably just seen as sort of curiosities becoming quite embedded in reliable places of engagement, places like japan germany france malaysia they're coming through really consistently still obviously size-wise they're still a long way behind places like india and pakistan but we've still seen them trending upwards and this it feels to me this has kind of cemented a lot of those places in our minds and yeah and so like i think sort of the overarching thing a little bit for me at the moment is and i'm always reticent to write a headline and halfway through a tournament.

7:20Finn Bradshaw:One of the wisest cricket writers I ever worked with was a guy called Andrew Ramsey out of Australia, and he said you never write off a player's career halfway through a test match because he's liable to score a century in the second innings and make you a fool. But it sort of feels like the strategy's delivering at the moment. You know, the decisions to go to a 20-team World Cup, the decisions to sort of – I mean, the decision to hold it in India in Sri Lanka shows through in terms of like some of the crowds for, you'll see like sort of two associate countries playing on a Monday morning and you've still got a half-decent crowd in the stadium.

7:56Finn Bradshaw:I think it's been amazing. So all of those things sort of coming together to sort of feel like there's this moment in the sun and to see yesterday like Zimbabwe in back-to-back countries, games, even though they're not an associate, for them to knock off bigger countries is really exciting. Sorry, round off there.

8:13Richard:Yeah, it is really exciting. although Finn we can write Australia can't we is that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah just just to make sure that we're okay with that Mike what are you seeing what do you think is it's a it's a

8:24Edward Fitzgibbon:really interesting moment isn't it I'm just in a great mood about this when we think about cricket there's so much introspection and worry and sort of conservatism yeah general bad vibes and then And when I've been thinking about this conversation, it just makes me feel really happy. This is lots of people enjoying this sport that we all love and demonstrating why it's really good. So there's a couple of things we can perhaps kind of open the discussion up with. One is that this to me is that this is the justification for 2020. Because my sense is, and you, Finn, and Eddie, have got greater depth of knowledge on this, and I want to get your perspectives.

9:08Edward Fitzgibbon:But to me, playing a shorter game speeds up the very, very long process it takes to get teams who are new to the international game sort of up to a competitive level. It can just be done faster. And that basically is what we want to see. I mean, you know, we would previously cricket was going when test matches were cricket. you know it was we'd add a you know a new country every 15 or 20 years and it would take them another 15 or 20 years to become truly competitive and that's very slow yeah that's very slow this this feels like this is what 2020 is for it's a gateway into cricket that countries can become

9:49Richard:competitive much faster let's let's pick up on that let's just let's land on that to begin with because it's a really good question and i just want to throw that in because then we can come you know we'll we'll build around it because actually so we get into the product the 2020 product i was for my sins the i i was the irish times cricket correspondent in around 2007 world cup the 50 over world cup the bob warmer story and all of that and at that point and i got this is my entry and into associate cricket which is a world that i didn't really know i grew up on cricket in england and i you know it was all of the preconceptions that you might have and one of the questions always for ireland in the noughties was it you know how do they become a test cricket nation and I'm just wondering if that's still the goal and whether or not actually that conversation has passed and 2020 is actually the thing we had used to have painful conversations with the ICC and the you know Warren Dutrim at Ireland and what is the pathway to test cricket and test series and and to Mike's point it's a long process it's it's incredible the implications on the supply chain of players is enormous and but Eddie what do you think about that now where are we in that conversation

11:03Mike Jakeman:yeah I mean it's interesting so the the intercontinental cup was actually something that I ran when I was at the ICC and I think that finished not long after or just before I I'd think so around the kind of mid 2010s and that's that was kind of four-day cricket for your islands your Afghanistan's your Namibias your Netherlands of this world and if you ask them at the time what the goal of that was. It was to prepare them for test cricket. Now, the reality is now is that that is no longer there and the pathway has diminished. And furthermore, this is probably not the podcast for us to discuss the issues surrounding test cricket and how many teams should be playing test cricket, should it be two division system and all the rest of it.

11:46Mike Jakeman:I think we can probably move forward and say that T20 cricket is the vehicle for the vast majority of associates and those four members on the lower rungs, Ireland and Afghanistan, four members, to not be playing test cricket. Cricket Ireland and Afghanistan would probably still be saying we want to be playing test cricket. The challenge is always going to be how can they get their players to be playing enough of that format of cricket in order for them to be as competitive as they would be in the T20 world when they're not playing that at all. So I think we can probably put that to bed, although I'm sure people from Ireland and Afghanistan will send me some nasty messages after this.

12:32Mike Jakeman:But I think we're probably there. The other interesting thing there, if we are moving on to the T20 side of things, is that there are a number of teams that didn't qualify that they should have or did in the past, for example, right? So, Jersey actually finished ahead of Scotland in the European qualifier. So, that's a very interesting story. Uganda played in the last T20 World Cup. They didn't qualify from Africa. P &G have traditionally been extremely strong in the T20 format. They were up there with Afghanistan and Netherlands in many qualifiers that I was involved in. And then, Finn mentioned something before around, Japan.

13:13Mike Jakeman:They are on the up and up and so are kind of European teams as well. And Japan's just about to hold the Asian games as well. And they're putting some infrastructure in place. So there's actually an argument there for 20 teams is not enough. And I know that's been going around as well, that we should be looking at the FIFA model of expanding more and more. Obviously, there are challenges around that, costs and qualification and things like that. But I think With all that being said, I think we can pretty much settle the fact that T20 cricket is going to be the way forward for associate cricket and to bring a much more competitive balance between the rest of the teams in world cricket.

13:52Edward Fitzgibbon:So what's happened in the last three to four years that has meant that previously I would watch a group stage game at a 2020 World Cup. And if I was watching it between an established team and an associate, and I would just hope for the sake of having something interesting to watch, that this would be the one game when the associate team got it together and played at their highest level and they happened to capture an established team cold. and that was kind of the interest and nine out of ten times it didn't happen but this feels different where even games where the established teams have come through like England against Nepal, they got a fright and it didn't really feel like a one-off this is Nepal having the game of their lives so what's happening below the surface that people who follow don't follow associate cricket week by week which includes me actually what's happened in the last three to four years to mean that we've now got a situation where it doesn't feel like 20 is too many

14:58Finn Bradshaw:Finn, what do you think? Eddie might know better than me but the thing that struck me watching this tournament is just the skills of the players have definitely increased I would say often that game awareness and tactics still there's a differential between associates and the full members and that probably just comes down from experience But, you know, it used to be if the run rate for an associate team sort of got above eight, say, the game was kind of done because they didn't have the capacity to get back in it. But, you know, the players now, it's a combination of technique and just like probably the democratisation of coaching and stuff like that means the players know how to accelerate and like, you know, I think just the breadth of T20 cricket around the world and it's both these players watching it but also playing some of them playing in those tournaments there's no kind of great secrets anymore and they all train to hit sixes and when to sort of when to go hard but also that sense that there's a lot of three overs is a lot of time you know what india aims to score like 50 off the last sort of two or three overs or whatever these days and that that makes it sounds ridiculous but they do it so so i think there's There's that.

16:15Finn Bradshaw:Yeah, I think it's interesting maybe like there's a lot of hand-wringing about franchise cricket, but it probably has spread tactics, coaching and so on to a lower level below it. The other thing I'd say is like the pitches that they've been prepared for this tournament have been excellent and they're quite predictable, not always bowler-friendly, but most of them have had something there for it but it means that it's sort of yeah like it's just made for good cricket and so everyone has a chance to score 170 180 again where sort of sometimes i think in the past where maybe the environment sort of has been a bit harder for the less experienced players but i think like the setup has been great good sized grounds good pitches pretty good coaching have all come together.

17:09Edward Fitzgibbon:I know you've done a lot of work with Nepal, so perhaps we could use them as an example. How have the opportunities for the best Nepalese players to play the highest level of cricket changed over this time that has helped to kind of accelerate the growth? So maybe not the growth, accelerate the quality of the team, of the performances.

17:34Mike Jakeman:Yeah, I mean, Nepal is one of the most fascinating stories in cricket. So if I'd cast my mind back, and this is an associate story that covers two of them actually, but my first World Cricket League event was in Italy, in Bologna, Italy of all places, in 2010. And I arrived when Nepal had just sailed to World Cricket League and in one of the articles I wrote about in Nepal specifically, there was a ride on the field that affected net run rate, which ended up Nepal going through. It's an interesting story that I kind of developed throughout that series. I kind of say that the passion and the hunger have kind of willed Nepal into this position that they're now in because the cutthroat nature of World Cricket Leagues that I was running at the time, this is 50 over stuff, mind you, but that kind of was, it was so much context, so much cutthroat nature.

18:20Mike Jakeman:If you didn't qualify, you had to wait two years in order to play another World Cricket League event in order to continue up the rungs of that ladder. So something like that hit me really hard, like reading about what happened. They're like, oh, you've got to study this case study of what happened in Nepal because it could happen in Italy and it could happen in your other and you're the tournament director. You're going to have to make sure that this is all taken care of. But I was walking into Bologna going, what have I got myself into? So the first event I did was, and Nepal and Italy were playing in Bologna of all places, and I rocked up the match, Nepal versus Bologna, and there was 250 Nepalese there in Bologna with their drums and their guitars and singing and dancing and carrying on.

18:57Mike Jakeman:And that has every single event I ran with Nepal, that has been the case. Whether it's a couple of hundred people or thousands. And even I was at the top MT20 in Darwin last year when Nepal came down to Australia to do some pre-World Cup preparation. And this goes to your question, Mike, around why. Like, I think it's about preparation and playing in different conditions and spending money and having resources in order to facilitate that. So they came to Darwin and they had thousands of people turning up to all their games in, again, Darwin, which is not an easy place to get to in Australia, let alone the rest of the world.

19:37Mike Jakeman:So they've gone through, Nepal have gone through a lot of challenges. They had some governance issues in the late 2010s, I believe, where they got suspended and they came back stronger. And I think it's, there's a few reasons why they've got to where they were to where they are. one is a kind of a hunger and a belief and a passion like cricket is one of the things that they are like the nepalese people are extremely proud of and they put people like their their captains and their great fields and their and their players on on a pedestal because they are representing nepal on the world stage which they don't get to do outside of many other things they've added some very charismatic people and leaders so paris kadka is a good friend of mine He was the captain throughout most of my time from Nepal.

20:24Mike Jakeman:And he's the general secretary of CAN now and leading on the Nepal Premier League. And he's an extremely talented cricketer. He's extremely charismatic. He's a very, very clever guy. And people have kind of followed him. And then, just to reiterate my point before, I think the resources that they've got, both from the ICC, but also from private investment and wealthy people within Nepal, giving them the opportunity to go and prepare and get people like Stuart Law involved and travel around the world and travel as a team. And that's one of the main, I think, things about them compared to many of the other associates, that they are a team.

21:04Mike Jakeman:They travel everywhere. And that nucleus of that side is going everywhere, whereas many of the other associates are probably not quite like that So there's a lot of people that kind of come in from different areas, playing different franchise cricket or club cricket or county cricket. So I think that would be kind of the main reasons that I would point out why Nepal has kind of got to this point.

21:24Richard:This is a question that from a sport business perspective, I look at this and think, OK, there's an audience product market fit question here at the centre of it. And Finn, to your point about where the audiences are for cricket and then where the product is mainly pointing. And, you know, there's that dilemma and that's it's an ICC cricket question, but it's also a football question. It's a rugby question. And it's that, you know, how quickly do you expand? And to Mike's point, cricket is always seen as slightly conservative, but has got the best record for creating new products and put them in the market and successfully making them work.

22:01Richard:So 2020 is working. It's the perfect vehicle. But I just wonder, what do you think about that sort of? Because, again, we'll talk about America in a minute and that's about that separately. But when you look at the digital audience, just give us an idea of that. Where are they?

22:17Finn Bradshaw:Yeah, so our top, let's say, five, six territories for this World Cup, across our website and app slash social, which is where we put out highlight clips and do that general sort of fan engagement. The top number one audience is India, Pakistan. But then after that, it goes UAE, Saudi, USA. and then in the next group you'll have Australia and the UK in there, South Africa, but then you'll be starting to pick up places like Malaysia. And obviously a lot of the fans there are not people who are fans of the Malaysian or UAE cricket team. Yeah, they're expats. And so one of cricket's great strengths is that there's this diaspora of Indians, Pakistanis, Nepalese, Bangladeshis, all over the world who do take their passion for cricket with them.

23:18Finn Bradshaw:And so one of the things that we think about a lot is making sure that there's not a barrier to them retaining that passion for the sport. And so we run ICC TV as a streaming product. It's free. You've got to subscribe, but you don't have to pay anything into those markets because there's not a broadcaster in in japan or germany or whatever who's um who for whom that audience is sizable enough at the moment for them to commercialize easily um but we want to make sure that one they're not pushed to pirate pirate sites but also two that there's no reason for them to be watching something else and that they can have their kids sitting next to them while they watch it and all of that sort of stuff and so that's been a really interesting thing for us and so this year we sort of really lent hard into that and in the past we've only ever taken the english feed into those countries and so this time for the first time like i mean cricket has been benefited so much from having star and our geostar as a partner in india and one of the main things they do is produce the feed in what 20 different feeds they've got 14 different languages or whatever it is and various they've even got a sign language feed this world cup like they're phenomenal um but for the first time the ICC has produced all Pakistan matches in Urdu uh it was producing Urdu feed for all Pakistan matches and for the first time we've got a broadcaster in Nepal and part of our deal with them is that they allow us to use their Nepali feed on ICC TV and so we like our ICC TV streaming which is in countries where there's not broadcasters and no traditional markets.

25:01Finn Bradshaw:We're roughly 2x our last T20 World Cup in America. Slightly beneficial from time zone point of view, but not to that degree. But that growth is almost entirely driven by people watching the different language feeds. So like our Nepal matches are always our top matches, but I think like the Nepali feed is worth maybe 30 % of our total overall streaming or something like that. And then the biggest territories for that outside of Nepal, Japan in particular, like we see that light in Japan and Korea. We see that really light up and I'm not sure if there's a relationship there because they're Buddhists.

25:46Finn Bradshaw:I'm not sure. I should probably investigate that. But, you know, so we're starting to really be able to cross correlate fans against content in different territories. But then to go another step this time, we've also started producing feeds in Japanese and Bahasa. Japan has been a growth market for a while. It's got a very active association there. And so the India pack match, we carried feeds across ICC channels in English, Urdu, Nepali, Hindi, plus Bahasa and Japanese. And we're like, well, if we do, no one in Japan who speaks Japanese is going to come to the ICC website. So we put it live streamed on Facebook and the Japanese language feed got 32 ,000 unique watches with an average watch time of about eight minutes in Japan compared to the English feed, which was also on YouTube, was about 20 ,000.

26:43Finn Bradshaw:So it was actually like the Japanese feed actually outperformed. Now, obviously, probably people who speak English probably come into ICC TV because they've already found it. But that was really interesting to us, that there's the first time we've seen this flicker that people are watching India versus Pakistan in Japanese in Japan. And so any success there is credit to the Japanese Cricket Association and the guys in the East Asia Pacific Office of the ICC. but to be honest five years i've been here like that's been one of the territories where we we always have promotional materials in japanese created there and stuff like that so it's probably one of those overnight successes that took 20 years but we're really interested in stuff we're saying see that we're also doing highlights in portuguese because brazil brazil is a really interesting cricket story we're doing arabic highlights the portuguese ones have performed

27:40Richard:pretty well so we really well i'd say what's really fascinating thank you finn it's really really interesting because we had alex balfour on as you know yes you know a while back about the early days of crick info and the promise of the long tail essentially is what that was about and that again was the sort of history of this and this is now the the the current and you can see those i'm wondering what the implications are of that data set that you've just provided there because and eddie i'll be interested in your view here because you've got this mismatch between well not mismatch but just the audience the broadcast rights market which has always been the sort of engine and still is the engine of of the economy but and it's a d2c question about okay trying to reach them via your own channels or via youtube or whatever it is but what are the implications you think product wise or just for the for governing bodies of the this information What sorts of decisions does it provoke?

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28:34Mike Jakeman:I think that it's like what the ICC have done with ICC TV, and I don't know if that was yours, Finn, but that was absolute game changer. So, again, when I was at ICC, I was in the development department generally. Yes, I was running events, but we were looking at how do we grow this game into all the other 96 other at the time associates. And the issue was always you can't find it. It's inaccessible. So in order for cricket to grow, it has to be able to be found easily, non-pirated, and to come through the truth source, which is ICC. So what the ICC have done in democratising that to these countries can only be beneficial for the sport of cricket in the long term.

29:22Mike Jakeman:I think Finn's point around getting that from it's an overnight success is absolutely true, and the cracks are starting to show on that from a performance perspective, which we discussed before, then you go to the digital layer, then it's kind of like a what's next, right? And the what's next is what I've been thinking about and talking to many associates about as well, is around infrastructure and your youth and schools programs. Because it's all well and good to have the aspirational nature of being able to watch T20 World Cups and democratising that from the ICC. but unless there are places to play and a cricket ground to see and feel and touch and a system underneath that where the youth is easily accessible and and having exposure to cricket there's always going to be that feeling of oh yeah we'll just move to another sport that's an interesting thing that comes along every couple of years now that's not an easy one to solve and a lot of sports haven't solved that to this day but cricket has this really incredible opportunity again to another point that Finn made around the kind of Asian diaspora being almost everywhere, right?

30:33Mike Jakeman:And they are cricket people through and through. And I will touch upon USA soon. They will have their families and children watching cricket because that is part of their cultural DNA. So we have as a sport, for me, it's still a sleeping giant in many ways, because so many people love it. It's everywhere all around the world. It's got democratised access to the best cricket in the world, including franchise leagues and World Cups. We now need to kind of take that to the next level and give young people and older people with infrastructure and youth programs in order to kind of make this thing blow up.

31:11Mike Jakeman:And I know that's happening and it's going to take a long time, but that's the next thing for me. All the groundwork's been laid by the ICC over the years.

31:19Finn Bradshaw:I think your question asked about what does it mean from a product point of view for someone like the ICC? it's something we've been wrestling with quite a bit what what is the what is our purpose of it for fans but if you look at it in hard commercials pretty much every sport makes a disproportionate amount of its revenue in its home market yeah there's very the premier league might be starting to shift that a little bit but generally IPL NFL whatever it's 95 or whatever it is in the home market yeah and so we have all these boards when i was at cricket australia would be constantly going look at all these fans we've got a new one up fan look at all these people in india who follow our content how can we commercialize them and of course we weren't really in a place to do that you do the odd deal with the indian tire company or something like that but it was pretty limited but there is an opportunity i think there if you were to look at that centrally because that long tail is long and also from a fan segmentation point of view it's not that complicated because because the fans an Indian fan in the USA is not very different from an Indian fan in the UK or in India they might have more money but and so when you're creating products for them you don't have to be hyper personalized actually and I think the more I think about it like the greatest signal we got one of the great signals we got as a sport was how popular India v Pakistan was in New York and we haven't really kind of exploited that but we've still got this great run into the Olympics and things like that so I think if we've got a few interesting projects coming down the line that I think will really start to harness that benefit of sort of collaboration amongst members because we're kind most of us most of the members in the ICC are actually all kind of the same business of trying to reach those fans but if you rather than everyone investing and trying to do it separately if you can do it we've got that long tail is really interesting but it's not that complicated to reach I suppose whereas maybe some other sports would be a bit more complicated so I'm really bullish on our ability to create products and and engage that audience because of those things.

33:39Edward Fitzgibbon:One of the stories that's emerged over the last five to ten years as franchise cricket has grown up, which is certainly very prevalent in England and Australia, less so in other countries, I think, is we've got too many franchise leagues. They're cluttering up the calendar. It's very difficult to follow who's playing where. None of the teams have a particularly strong identity. we don't know which players are playing there from one year to the next it's just a carousel and can't we all just put them back in whites and get on with it properly but if we take it a slightly different point of view and say well hold on a minute what we're discovering through this tournament is that there's actually a really deep player a talent pool of players who need opportunities to play at the highest level possible and actually what these franchise leagues are doing is giving more opportunities to those guys.

34:36Edward Fitzgibbon:Now, if this is, Eddie, you can point out if this narrative is wrong, and actually I don't know how much access, let's say, players on the Nepalese national team have to the Caribbean Premier League, for example. But then if we assume that that narrative is true, then, and we then move on to kind of think of it from a fan point of view, can you explain Finn a bit about the relationship between the ICC and the operators of the Caribbean Premier League and the Pakistan Super League and the Nepalese Premier League because if you want to be if you're a fan of Lokesh Bam as of last week and you want to follow him around the world and see him take advantage of what I hope will be some quite nice contracts coming his way over the year in all these different places.

35:30Edward Fitzgibbon:How do you do it as a fan? And like, is this a job for the ICC to be like, right, guys, you know, like, this is cricket's diplomacy problem, isn't it? How do we bring all these things together into something that means that if you're a new fan, how do you do it?

35:44Finn Bradshaw:Yeah, that's a great challenge. The boring answer to the ICC's relationship with those leagues is we sort of give us regulatory stamp of approval to the leagues, But the league's relationship is with the member, whoever, whatever that country they're in. Beyond that, we don't have a contractual relationship with them. And I would say like the best of those leagues have been such a positive for the sport. All the innovation in tactically, skill-wise and everything that's come into cricket has pretty much come out of the IPL. And then sort of bedded down in those other leagues. And I think you're seeing that accelerate, especially now as the IPL has more teams in more leagues.

36:23Finn Bradshaw:unfortunately there's some leagues that behave really badly they have people they have owners who only have selfish interests at heart or and don't pay players and things like that and that that is a net negative for the sport and so I think it's it's what it is one of those very sort of complicated relationships but I would say someone who sits thinking about fans all the time fans are unambiguous in telling us that t20 cricket is their favorite form of cricket outside of maybe england and australia where test cricket has still got a dominant position and but they're also pretty unambiguous in telling you that that the the competition needs to have meaning and we talk about meaning in context always so must be a sports business podcast if you use those words but and so you purpose that's right but that doesn't that can be international events like icc events are really good for that whether it's qualifiers like our engagement on qualifiers is great because you win it and you get to go to world cup but it's also the same with t20 tournaments i think south africa's done a great job there of clearly creating some connection and meaning with the community there and so they've great crowds and it's just a nice flywheel to use another sports business term to really get a to get a product going there you know if you if you started from scratch i don't think it'd be a secret to say you'd probably organize our calendar and everything and be better i think where hopefully we'd sort of starting to get to as you get more aligned incentives across the board and then hopefully the outcomes flow from that.

38:11Finn Bradshaw:Bit of a politician's answer to that one, but I don't have a particularly, unfortunately, like magic wand for that. Eddie, what do you think?

38:19Edward Fitzgibbon:If you could crack some heads, Eddie, what would you say in this place about that?

38:23Mike Jakeman:I think the World Cricket Association did a really good report last year on identifying blocks in the calendar to potentially play and give more space and meaning and context to cricket. Again, like the horse has bolted on many of these leagues and many of these leagues in the top four members in particular are doing very, very well commercially. So you can't put the genie back in the bottle there. When it comes to the kind of associate players, so these guys from Nepal and USA, or how do we pronounce his name, is sensation. And where does he go next? How do you follow him? And in an athlete-led economy that we're going into now where the younger generation are following athletes rather than teams themselves.

39:08Mike Jakeman:I think we've got a really interesting opportunity here to give more space to these players. How do we do that? I think it does start with these leagues being played in individual countries. So ETPL is coming up, which I think is a great initiative. The three best associates in Europe having franchise cricket where they can have their guys, top Irish, Dutch and Scottish guys, playing meaningful cricket as in meaning that they're actually playing for a trophy with international cricketers and other cricketers coming through. The Nepal Premier League was absolutely chock-a-block every single game.

39:48Mike Jakeman:They had Faf Duplassie there and other big-name stars. Major League Cricket's done a great job and they've integrated many of their... Many of the USA national team players have played there and played really well. So getting that exposure at the highest level back to the performance side from before has certainly to do with that. Now, isn't a poor Premier League or a – and we'll leave MLC aside. Isn't a poor Premier League and ELT, ETPL going to rival a Big Bash or 100 or PSL will leave IPL alone? Probably not, but it doesn't need to. It needs to provide ability for these guys who play irregularly on an international level to play regularly for franchises.

40:30Mike Jakeman:They need to be able to tell stories. And I think the opportunity for these leagues is actually around doing more narrative-driven storytelling things. So if I was, and I was speaking to Paris about this, lean more into your players. They've got huge social followings. They perform really well on T20. do some pre-event documentary series, drive survive type thing, get them more in front of the camera more often and get more people following. So that benefits the player obviously, but also Nepal as well. So I think for these kind of second tier, should we call them second tier, third tier leads, notwithstanding the issue around the calendar, they have to have a space to be able to play for performance, but also for commercial opportunities for those associates because they will need extra funding on top of what ICC gives them in order to continue to succeed.

41:19Mike Jakeman:And then it gives those players themselves the opportunity to create their own narratives, their own brand, which helps them as well. So, yeah, that kind of made sense. But I think there is an area where these kind of second-tier leagues, as we say, associate players, get more exposure through their national team leagues and through that relationships with other associate leagues that come up.

41:45Richard:I want to talk about America because it sort of encapsulates a lot of the themes that we've talked about. And there's a good quote, Eddie, you wrote, the opportunity versus reality gap is larger than anywhere else in global sport. So the difference between, you know, reality and opportunity. So let's explore that because it's an interesting idea. We had Peter Hutton on, who was the head of sport at Facebook Meta for an interesting period of time. He's also a cricket guy. You both know him. He was, you know, he's a TV rights guy.

42:13Finn Bradshaw:He was chair of the T20 World Cup in the USA.

42:16Richard:Exactly. And his line, because he's seen the Facebook data, that's why he's bullish on cricket in America, because it looks from, you know, one of the greatest sort of data sets in the world that it's pointing towards cricket in America and is, you know, is a thumbs up. So just starting from that premise, Eddie, just let's explore this a moment. And what are, we'll get to an opportunity threat type framing of it. and we've had the World Cup, as you say, 24, and then we've got the Olympic moment. So, you know, that's in the ether as well. But just give me a sort of two-penathon cricket in the States as you see it.

42:56Mike Jakeman:Yeah, I mean, I've been rolling that line out for at least the last kind of five years with...

43:04Richard:Don't knock rolling lines out, by the way. Me and Michael are very, very healthy living on that sort of thing.

43:10Mike Jakeman:Oh, yeah. Yeah, and I've been rolling that one out for probably since, really since 2015 when I did the Cricket All-Stars event. And why, at a macro level, before I go into some of the reasons why, and Finn can tell us the data on it, but at the macro level, it's the world's second biggest sport in the world's biggest sports market with a diaspora that is hopefully heavily over-indexed on household income, that being that Indian, Pakistani, Bangladesh, Sri Lankan. So those kind of two or three data points at a macro level should be enough for cricket fans, investors, those interested in kind of global sport economics to at least say, okay, there's something there there.

43:55Mike Jakeman:Now, we will get into challenges and issues and all the rest of the time. But from a macro level, that's where I stand. And what I, why, now I back that up. In 2015, I did the Cricket All-Stars event with these legends of the game. We had 32 ,000 in Citi Field in New York. We had 24 ,000 in Houston. We had 30 ,000 in Dodger Stadium. And these were all fans of cricket that came to a baseball stadium. And these baseball teams, who I'm now friends with quite a lot of them, said we'd never seen – the Mets, I had a chat with them even a couple of weeks, and they said we had the World Series a week before the Cricket All-Stars in 2015.

44:36Mike Jakeman:And that was by far a better crowd than the World Series. If there's anything cricket-related, then we want to hear about it. And this was kind of 10, 11 years later. So fast forward that with the World Cup and all the rest that have happened, there's serious interest from American sports business people, American sports investors in the game of cricket in the US. They've also looked at, they're also looking at or have looked at IPL teams. And there's a lot of reports out there of another one, but there's been a lot of investment over that over the last year of time. So the American sports or the American cricket opportunity is like only just beginning.

45:14Mike Jakeman:And Major League Cricket have done a really good job. But at the end of the day, Major League Cricket are also, they're only on four to six weeks of the year, right? So again, the challenge is exposure. It's got to be in order to be a success. America's got to be the best. Americans won't do second best. So that's why I performed to the US national team and Donald Trump tweeting about USA national team, we start to really get some momentum. It's not going to happen overnight, but the floodgates are about to open, I think.

45:44Finn Bradshaw:Yeah, I want to give you a really fascinating data point, which I'm not sure exactly what it tells you, but I've been having a look into the prediction markets products in the US, Polymarket and Kelsey. And I think that's all the stat, like Kelsey really over-indexes in terms of sport. a really high percentage of the number of contracts offered there is sport. Yesterday, the number one trending contract when I looked, mainly I think it was early morning East Coast time, about 6am East Coast time, number one trending market over there was the Pakistan versus Namibia match. Like ahead of who's Trump going to choose his Fed chair, ahead of any NBA, ahead of anything.

46:27Finn Bradshaw:And that might not mean anything, But it says to me, like, we just keep getting these signals that there's this really committed cricket fan base in the US. And the cricket ecosystem as a whole, outside a few exceptions, like the All-Star thing or the World Cup, just refuses to give them a product. Like, we just, we, because, yeah, you can't just serve up anything. Because, like, what's the stat that I read? Like, in 24, the household income by nationality in the US. The average one for an Indian household is something like the American Indian, you know, Indian Americans is like a hundred thousand.

47:07The next of any other nationality was 80 ,000.

47:10Finn Bradshaw:Like they're just, they're a very wealthy, powerful group over there. And I think one of the things I worry about is what are their kids and their kids' kids interested in? Is that fan base going to sort of fade out with that group? And yeah, it is such a great opportunity there, But we need to think really hard about what products we're creating for that market.

47:34Edward Fitzgibbon:Does American geography matter to this? Just trying to build any sense of momentum for something new in a country the size of a continent. I mean, is that a very old fashioned way of thinking about it? You don't need that many people in a stadium. but it would be quite nice if you were a cricket fan to meet another cricket fan you know in real life if you're walking down the street you know i mean i i'm just hypothesizing here like and is that more difficult compared to a country with a bigger population

48:09Finn Bradshaw:density like nepal i think the bigger problem is our grounds like god to give to be rugby where you can just play in rectangular stadiums because sport in its perfect instance is something that you play you watch you you talk about all of that and like cricket is a really annoying size ground it's big pitches even with hybrid pitches and things like that is pretty specific you need specific technology like it is a super annoying sport to play beyond just playing gully or street cricket i mean one of its great powers is you can play with two people anywhere with the bat and a ball like it it is a better experience doing that than it is to play soccer with two people um and so i'd say i think that is probably more i think inhibiting at the moment and than it but definitely but i mean the time zone doesn't help in that the best cricket in the world is played at a horrible time i think it almost the worst possible time zone for that country so white wave american sports not really cracked in india i think a large part of that's time zone the vice versa so yeah i think if i could wave a magic wand it would be that you that ai invents cricket grounds that you can drop from a helicopter yeah so from from my perspective

49:32Mike Jakeman:mike and it kindly answers your question a little bit is that there are big hot spots of cricket in the US. Like Texas is massive. Like Houston, Dallas, huge. Bay Area and LA are both huge. Northeast, like particularly around like New York, Brooklyn, and then out to New Jersey. So there's these really big, and I'm sure there's some data, I've certainly got some data from my work over the years on these big kind of hot spots where they are, where they can bump into fans of cricket and talk about cricket. and there's 200 ,000 over 200 ,000 registered cricketers all over the US and they're mainly consolidated in those kind of key market areas, including kind of Chicago.

50:12Mike Jakeman:And we haven't really talked about it and we should touch upon Canada as well, which is just nearly as big as an opportunity as well due to the expat population. But then you run into issues around infrastructure in the US and Finn's absolutely right. And when I was over in the US, we were looking to get, I was going to get a number of cricket events up and running and I've flown up and down the US and checked out thousands of places, maybe thousands, but a lot of places to see if we could fit a cricket ground into this facility in a university or in this park or whatever. And generally, the Americans are just like, you're trying to do what?

50:49No, I don't think so.

50:51Mike Jakeman:I think we've kind of got over that a little bit. And what they did at Grand Prairie in converting a minor league baseball stadium to the cricket ground there has been a really great success. That's a really great facility. obviously open coliseum hosted the mlc here and as of as of now like i'm starting to lose count almost of the amount of cricket facilities that are being developed by generally private wealthy individuals in these kind of hot spots you look at atlanta chicago new jersey was just announced so but that's kind of private money getting put into cricket facilities now what what standard are they going to be?

51:32Mike Jakeman:And then the second part would be, for me, for these guys building it would be, how are you going to commercialise these venues? Because the reality is you might get an MLC team maybe in time. You might bring another World Cup back to the US. So how many days are you actually going to monetise these venues? And that's something that I don't know whether they consider or not. so in some so so for me infrastructure is almost number one and i've said quite a lot and and and thinking about what does infrastructure cricket infrastructure look like in the u.s and i think it does need to be multi-sport i don't think cricket's big enough now to command its own county cricket grounds or whatever that can get through every weekend tens of thousands of people drink a lot of beer and that's where you make your money there has to be consideration around the business side of the infrastructure in order to make these things go and again once you get infrastructure you start getting people talking about it it's in people's faces and all the things i spoke about before so for me infrastructure is one of the main kind of really breaking the u.s screen to cricket when you like just talking about this infrastructure

52:43Finn Bradshaw:thing like i think people still talk to me about making cricket more accessible arcane rules and all this and my pushback always to that is one to richard's point like t20 has just been a phenomenal growth driver and any sport would kind of give to have a product like that but then some people go well it's still three three and a half hours we should do t10 i think the accessibility thing to me more is is there a format you can play in a soccer ground or something like that and like our development team has got a thing called creole cricket where you can be played on like a tennis court and the idea is to codify a version that's for for countries where cricket grounds are going to be built in the next five years and you know when i sort of see people trying to do things that are sort of versions of other sports to make them more accessible i do wonder if there's an opportunity there for cricket at least as again as a short-term sort of more short to medium-term play to use existing facilities because in some of those markets, that demand is there.

53:50Finn Bradshaw:And if we wait until there's a really nice cricket stadium built, is it going to be too late? Do we need to work out ways? It's interesting, isn't it?

53:57Richard:The theme of quite a lot of the conversations has been the signals, to use your point, Finn, that the market is selling and the product response from whoever it is, the franchise is, from the governing bodies and private people. and Mike said at the beginning this makes him very happy I like the idea of Mike happy that's pleased me but there's a sort of I'm enthused by it but also there's a sense of there's a confidence that actually people will work out the solution. We put a lot of faith in governing bodies almost like governments to solve all the problems and actually it feels like the audience for cricket is ahead of the governing bodies.

54:38Richard:They're trying to find the products They're either digitally, they'll play cricket in the street if they want to, all of that stuff. And actually, it's not the governing bodies and the franchise owners and the business people who are going to lead an audience in somewhere. It's the other way around. And I think in other sports, again, would love that situation. You know, on a podcast like this, I'm bombarded with people who are saying I'm going to reimagine rugby league or whatever it is. loads of different sports are trying to sort of conjure up things to try and find an imagined audience that isn't the case in cricket the cricket has the audience and it's responding to it and it's it will get there or not but it's a sort of better problem the data really backs

55:19Finn Bradshaw:that up like gemba does our fan data and analysis and they do this ongoing survey of sports fans across the world and they say what is your what are your top five sports and then sort of get you to rank them and i think it's like more than 50 percent of people who put cricket in their top five put cricket as their number one and the only sport that's higher than that is is soccer you know and there's other sports sort of struggle to get to the 20 percent of people doing that you might say you're an nba fan but it's not your number one same with f1 and so on and so like and it gels with me anecdotally and eddie you've been around the world when you meet people are kind of all in on cricket or they're not there's not that many sort of casual cricket fans and so yes there's a hurdle but once people have cleared that hurdle my god they're passionate about it um and so they'll yeah they will create their own league they'll play on the street they'll find it wherever they can and we've just got to serve them better cricket cricket is a drug yeah

56:20Richard:one of the good ones yeah i mean get them hooked there's two elements here that i'll think again

56:26Mike Jakeman:and I've been working cricket in the US for the last 10 years. There's two elements to it. Number one is the current cricket fan, the big cricket fan has been described in the US, is around 6 to 8 million real cricket fans. Sometimes it goes up to 20, but let's kind of use 6 to 8 as the real cricket fan. Now that, and these very high household income individuals. So that's actually, they're extremely strong numbers when you compare that to Australia for population 27. It's probably got 12 million cricket fans in Australia or even the UK or anyone else. And their crickets are number one and they're high household income.

57:01Mike Jakeman:So there's an argument to make that crickets arguably already kind of made it in the US and it just needs to kind of continue catering for that six to eight million high household income fan and bring in more World Cups and expand the MLC and bring RPL teams over and things like that. But there's also, this is the US and this is the US sports market. And there's two elements to that. Again, having lived there before. Americans love business opportunity. And again, I think the delta between reality and opportunity in the world's second biggest sports market, the swing certainly biggest sport in the world's biggest sports market, and they're starting to sniff around and some of them get their toes in.

57:41Mike Jakeman:So there's that. And then there's the how do we bring other sports people within and business people and sports in college and youth sports and things like that, how do we get them involved in cricket and is it this hybrid version, is this gully cricket version? How do we at least get them exposed? And if you can skim off the top 5 % of those sports-interested fans to become cricket fans and start to monetise and commercialise them in the world's biggest sports market, then momentum builds. All of a sudden, you're looking 20 years in the future and cricket's seriously on the map. MLS or soccer is a pretty good analogy, right?

58:22Mike Jakeman:and it's taken 30 odd years to get where they are now until hosting many World Cups, the women's national team falling really well. Cricket's only really done it over the last, let's say, two, three years. So I think a little bit of patience on the, let's call them the non-cricket number one fans, but then you've got a really interesting business on the number one fan of cricket. It's already there. So I think there's kind of two tracks there.

58:49Richard:Yeah, yeah. Well, listen, Mike, are you still happy? You started happy.

58:53Edward Fitzgibbon:Yeah, I do feel like the tendency is to soul search a bit. There was a period in the middle of this where I was starting to get a bit less. Like, oh, we created more problems here.

59:04Richard:We should have one of those things like elections that gauges your happiness over time.

59:09Edward Fitzgibbon:Indeed. No, but I love this idea, well, maybe cricket's already made it in America. I mean, what are we judging this on? you know obviously there's a huge point about how big is it in the culture but yeah we're talking about a you know as i said a country the size of a continent and it doesn't need saturation across the entire country to to make a claim to being america to be a cricket country i think i think that's i think that's really important uh you know the way that india is for example like it doesn't it doesn't need that to say that it has a presence and it's yeah you know i was i'm still slightly astonished at how quickly MLC has established itself from a since its first edition and how quickly it's been able to get some of the world's biggest names into into the league yeah that's because I think you know would you like to have five weeks in America well yeah I would actually you know it's an attractive place to go and you know you're going to have a good time but nonetheless it's you know it's hugely significant to me that Steve Smith was in mlc so quickly you know that's yeah yeah being the Australian team so quickly I always think

1:00:17Richard:about the global fan question and it's like when the NFL comes to London it's a version you know and I always wonder what football looks like in America I'm I'm interested in what cricket looks like when it reaches America from the American side and you know we make a lot of people go to shorthands about cultural relevance and but it's a it's a sort of cartoon version of real life in a way as a marketing sort of version and actually when the nfl quite often when you talk to the nfl you know when when they come over the nba have their games over it used to be an exotic there was room for an exotic product a niche product the nfl can't be niche it's got to come through the front door it's america running down region street or whatever whereas i think actually what we're talking about is a city you know in america is a series of niches every country is and it's trying to sort of weave those in and it's perfectly doable but it's it doesn't fit the grand plan if the grand scheme is a powerpoint deck with global domination of cricket or of football or whatever you know good luck with that but people aren't like that and so i think you know i'm really encouraged by the just the nuance of the question and the debate because actually it's not neat it doesn't fit into a marketing channel model in that way as much as everyone would want it to and i'm sort of encouraged by that you know i think the more i think about it the more there is two types of sport one is chasing trying to conjure a fan and the other is trying to service an existing fan you know and i think cricket's in the latter and is in a better space well listen we've gone for ages i'm really grateful because i know that it's a really busy time finn is in the middle of a major global tournament i can see the sort of work that i'm interested in the bradshaw map of the world we might come might revisit that at some point yeah sounds like a valuable piece of uh you know digital real estate but finn thanks very much

1:02:04Finn Bradshaw:your time and eddie likewise pleasure these gentlemen pleasure thank you guys thanks guys

1:02:09Edward Fitzgibbon:i really enjoyed that

From the publisher

What T20 Cricket Teaches Every Sport About The Race For The Global Fan.

Mike Jakeman joins Richard for Inside Edge, the business of cricket series. 

Guests: 

Finn Bradshaw, Head of Digital, ICC

Edward Fitzgibbon, Managing Director, NYZ Consulting.

Twenty20 cricket is one of the great product innovations in modern sport. Compact, volatile, accessible to anyone with three hours and a phone signal, it has done something fifty-over cricket never managed: it compressed the development timeline for nations outside the traditional power base. 

But here is the lesson other sports should be studying carefully: a brilliant product and a functional structure are not the same thing. Cricket has the former. It is still negotiating its way toward the latter.

The current ICC T20 World Cup is a further proof of concept, if any were needed. The shorter form has lowered the barrier between the established test nations and the rest. But the structure of the game, its calendar, and the allocation of central resources remains wedded to the previous world. So what are the lessons of this event for other sports as the race for the global fan intensifies? 

Unofficial Partner is the leading podcast for the business of sport. A mix of entertaining and thought provoking conversations with a who's who of the global industry.
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