On a warm June night, a glistening stadium rose from a park like a mirage.
Constructed in just 100 days — complete with press boxes, luxury suites, and 34,000 seats — the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in Long Island, New York, hosted a cricket match between India and Pakistan.1 Standard seats went for over $1,000 on secondary markets2. Premium tickets sold for $10,0003. Inside, the crowd — wearing India’s sky blue and Pakistan’s forest green — roared.
Halfway around the world, hundreds of millions more were watching. The match generated 256 million viewing hours in India despite finishing at 4 a.m. local time — double the audience of the most recent Super Bowl in the United States4. It was one of the most-watched sporting events on the planet, unfolding in suburban New York. Most Americans living within miles of the stadium had no idea any of this was happening.
After eight matches over three weeks, the stadium was dismantled, with parts shipped to its next event. Eisenhower Park returned to Little League fields and walking paths. But that pop-up stadium represented a $15 billion sports league most Western investors don’t know exists — and signaled cricket's emergence as a global investment opportunity operating at massive scale. With over two billion fans worldwide5 — it’s widely considered the world’s second most popular sport, behind soccer6 — and media rights values that have more than tripled in just five years7, cricket represents one of the fastest-growing sports investment opportunities on the planet — and yet remains historically overlooked by Western markets.
For institutional investors and private wealth managers, this disconnect between cricket's global reach and its absence from the mainstream American sports conversation represents both a blind spot and an opening.
America’s Pastime
Before baseball, there was cricket8. Benjamin Franklin brought the sport's official rule book from England to America in 1754. George Washington's troops played "wickets" at Valley Forge in 1778. Abraham Lincoln turned out to watch Chicago play Milwaukee.9
An 1844 match between the United States and Canada in Manhattan was the first international sporting event in the modern world — predating the Olympics by more than 50 years. Spectators bet up to $120,000 on the outcome — the equivalent of $2 million today. Within decades, baseball had displaced cricket entirely. The sport needed a new home.10
It found one in India. The country had inherited cricket from British colonial rule and transformed it from an imperial pastime into national obsession.
Today, according to Oakwell Sports Advisory, India constitutes roughly 90 percent of the world's one billion cricket fans aged 16 to 69.11 The Indian market is more than twice as large as all other established cricket nations combined.
The infrastructure capitalizing on this opportunity would look familiar to any American sports fan. The Indian Premier League (IPL), launched in 2008, replicated the NBA and NFL playbook, with city-based franchises rather than regional associations; private ownership rather than member clubs; as well as salary caps, player drafts, and revenue sharing — the modern American sports league model, transplanted to a country where cricket had operated for more than a century on entirely different principles.
The format itself represents a break with tradition. Twenty20—or T20—is a shortened version of cricket designed for the modern era. Twenty20 cricket — which features 120 balls per team, matches lasting approximately three hours—was designed specifically to fit the rhythms of today’s media consumption. Traditional Test cricket can sprawl across five days, a format beloved by purists but increasingly difficult to monetize. T20 cricket fits into an evening broadcast window and travels well on social media.
The commercial success has validated the approach. When the IPL's first eight franchises were auctioned in 2008, they sold for more than $700 million combined — almost double their reserve price, suggesting the market had immediately recognized value that cricket's traditional administrators had left untapped. Skeptics questioned whether franchise cricket could generate sustainable returns.
The answer arrived in 2021, when two expansion franchises sold for $1.7 billion.12 Today, Oakwell Sports Advisory estimates the IPL's total enterprise value exceeds $15 billion. It’s a league whose ten franchises play in a roughly two-month window each year13 — yet several are valued on par with, or above, teams in year-round, more established sports.14
The media rights deal tells a similar story. The IPL sold its domestic broadcasting rights to Star Sports and Viacom18 for $6.2 billion over five years — more than double the previous agreement.15 On a revenue-per-match basis, only the NFL generates more broadcast income.16 The league operates as a mature sports property at scale, generating returns that have begun attracting institutional capital that typically flows only to the most established Western franchises.
The Next Frontier
The opportunity is no longer confined to India anymore. From London to Los Angeles, cricket is building infrastructure with the kind of capital commitment that doesn't chase fads.
In 2021, The Hundred launched as the England and Wales Cricket Board's answer to the IPL — a compressed, made-for-TV format designed to fit modern attention spans and pull cricket out from behind paywalls. The format — 100 balls per side, roughly two and a half hours — represented a break with tradition that split English cricket opinion.
Four years later, the league has shown enough promise to attract institutional investment. In February 2025, the ECB announced it had successfully sold stakes in all eight Hundred franchises. Private capital had arrived in English cricket.17
But what's attracting investors is the women's side of the equation. Women's matches in The Hundred drew 320,000 spectators in 202418, in just its fourth year. Women's and men's competitions run in parallel with equal prize money, allowing many female cricketers to turn professional for the first time.19 The model is attracting investors betting that women's cricket can deliver growth where traditional formats have plateaued.
Meanwhile, Major League Cricket is building something permanent. The league, which was launched in July 2023 as the United States' first professional T20 league, is backed by $120 million from investors including Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen20, with numbers that tell the growth story. The league expanded from 19 matches in 2023 to 34 in 2025. Broadcasting partnerships with YES Network and NBC Sports Bay Area put cricket on mainstream American sports channels.21 Infrastructure investment is converting Oakland Coliseum for cricket, has upgraded Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas and Broward County Stadium in Florida — creating coast-to-coast presence.
The league is mandating that franchises secure permanent home stadiums by 2028, and the deadline is no coincidence. Everything is building toward the Olympics in 2028 in Los Angeles—cricket’s first Olympic appearance in 128 years.22 Men's and women's T20 tournaments will feature six teams each.
It’s a perfect storm: Major League Cricket franchises opening permanent stadiums across American cities. The world's best players competing on American soil for Olympic gold. A global television audience of hundreds of millions watching cricket in the world's most competitive sports market. The U.S. national team, built from diaspora communities, competing for medals in front of home crowds.
Major League Cricket’s founders say the U.S. already has a sizable base that they’re building around, and the ICC’s U.S. events strategy is meant to raise awareness rather than fight for the same weekends as the NFL. The 2028 Olympics provide the showcase moment when cricket commands mainstream American attention for the first time since Abraham Lincoln watched Chicago play Milwaukee.
Cricket has arrived in markets where it was once invisible, backed by institutional capital, permanent infrastructure, and investors moving with the urgency of those who see the window opening.
That stadium rising from a Long Island park wasn't a mirage. It was proof of concept.
