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Ozarkian_Tritip t1_jcu0p2m wrote

Is there a market for Cricket in North America?

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ecphiondre t1_jcu19tx wrote

Among white Americans, no. Among subcontinent immigrants (a pretty large number) and maybe a few English/Australians/other Cricket playing nations, yes, a lot. This league is trying to be niche anyway, it's goel is not to grab the mainstream American attention, at least for now.

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jaybleeze t1_jcunr50 wrote

Where I live there’s a large Bhutanese and Nepali immigrant community. One of the local metro parks installed cricket pitches and they are packed on weekends

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Jlx_27 t1_jcw3nlc wrote

Sounds like a fun place to hang out on weekends!

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brownstone79 t1_jcwdstb wrote

The cricket pitches that I know of in my area were set up by the local West Indian population. A bit of googling shows me that there is a local league with 2 divisions.

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Blue1234567891234567 t1_jczfxkn wrote

How does one acquire a large Bhutanese immigrant community

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jaybleeze t1_jczgpni wrote

I honestly don’t know. It’s north Akron. For whatever reason there are a lot of Bhutanese and Nepali immigrants and refugees that live here. I’m a big fan because their food is great and they wear fun hats

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Blue1234567891234567 t1_jczmyrw wrote

No disagreement from me here, I think Bhutan is awesome. Just aren’t a lot of immigrants of ‘em out there

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agoia t1_jcuw3ac wrote

I actually like cricket a good bit. Very relaxing yet also more exciting than baseball. With more people like Jomboy talking about it and giving very helpful explanations, I think it could get some decent viewership.

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gta0012 t1_jcw4ck8 wrote

It's actually like my response when people say "you like cricket?" I'm just like yeah it's better than baseball lol

I don't watch it religiously and pay more attention to Nation stuff but I definitely enjoy it more than I do baseball.

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ecphiondre t1_jcwpqhv wrote

I don't know about the relaxing part much mate. There are times when I feel like having a heart attack, especially if you are a New Zealand supporter.

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Nicholarse_Angle t1_jcxey90 wrote

Or moments of severe depression if you're a fan of the current South Africa team.

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RedStar9117 t1_jcv6gko wrote

Sometimes when I go to Washington DC I see some Indian fellows playing cricket near the Washington Monument.....looks pretty cool

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ecphiondre t1_jcwojuf wrote

There is a Washington team for the this league, called Washington Freedom, I don't think a name can get more American than that 😂

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RedStar9117 t1_jcwrd7t wrote

A grand tradition of terrible sports team names for DC teams. The last good team name was the Washington Senators and they left 60 years ago

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chaosgoblyn t1_jcwwwxe wrote

Aw, not a fan of the Bullets?

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RedStar9117 t1_jcwwz99 wrote

Never seemed like a good team name to me

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chaosgoblyn t1_jcxryv5 wrote

On the one hand it's kind of funny how extremely poor in taste it was, on the other hand, it's a professional team

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RedStar9117 t1_jcxs6gg wrote

I think they changed it when DC had the highest per Capita murder rate in the US

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RedStar9117 t1_jcwrfet wrote

I retract my statement... Capitals js a pretty good name

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PositivelyIndecent t1_jcwh9xa wrote

This is the correct answer.

Im English but live in America. I was walking my dog the other day and saw a couple of south Asian kids playing cricket in the garden. Made me happy to see it.

Im curious as to what kind of number ESPN+ gets for cricket too.

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sugoiiiidesunee t1_jcwi8tp wrote

Lol, considering how big the MLS has become and how long it took to be what it is now I think they have a mountain to climb.

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ecphiondre t1_jcwp9fz wrote

As I said earlier, they are not trying to appeal to the mainstram audience or compete with baseball. They are only trageting the immigrants population where the demand is plenty. There are many small local leagues and divisions already.

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digitalFermentor t1_jcwqekp wrote

They should be quite successful. Wiki says there are over 6 million South Asians in the USA. Many of those will be fully Americanised and have no interest in cricket, but if even 15%-30% decide are interested that’s an immediate market of 1-2 million. Plus any Caribbean viewers and finally Americans without a cricket heritage.

The real question for me is what format will they play? I’m assuming T20 and not Test.

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ecphiondre t1_jcwqr7k wrote

Yes T20. Franchise leagues are only played in T20 formats.

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apocolipse t1_jcwyv82 wrote

There are more people who know who Sachin Tendulkar is than there are US Citizens... and yet only about 2% of Americans know who he is (Indian Americans... and Seth Macfarlane and people like me who got the joke from the 1 episode of Family Guy)

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ecphiondre t1_jcx06zl wrote

How is that relevant here? Many Americans don't know Maradona and many Indians don't know Micheal Jordan or Kobe Bryant (I only learned about him after seeing the news of his helicopter crash on Reddit), that doesn't affect anything. Even 1 percent of people in America (3 million) showing interest would be huge for a niche league.

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apocolipse t1_jcx1b46 wrote

The relevance is to say that yeah, it’s not popular here, given one of the literal most popular athletes in the world 98%+ of Americans have never heard of him.

Compare that to Soccer, also not that popular in the US as a pro sport, most Americans could name at least Ronaldo, Pele, Beckham.

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JohnHwagi t1_jcvr7vg wrote

I live in Texas, and we have cricket pitches in a lot of public parks here. It is mostly Indian people that play here, but not exclusively and there are open leagues you can sign up for.

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learnitallboss t1_jcvz6su wrote

I used to live in Austin and drove by a cricket match of Indians vs Pakistanis, and there were probably 300 people watching.

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ConstantStudent_ t1_jcvtmgl wrote

Would do great in Canada. It’s like half our population and growing

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WCRugger t1_jcwn7rq wrote

Prior to Covid there was actually a Canadian tournament called the Global T20 Canada. Had 6 teams. https://gt20.ca/ Will be interesting to see if it is re-launched or teams join MLC.

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JgL07 t1_jcwcu7c wrote

I wouldn’t be surprised if a team is based in Canada

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David_McGahan t1_jd0kedi wrote

I’m Australian - my brother-in-law went over to teach in Winnipeg for a year. His school was full of Pakistani and Bangladeshi kids just mad keen for him to start running cricket games in phys ed or gym class or whatever you call it there.

This MLC league should 100% have had a Toronto team. There’s like 7mil South Asian Canadians, and 1.5 in Greater Toronto alone.

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letsnotreadintoit t1_jcuizgc wrote

It’s probably gonna be like the MLS, none of the best players will be there until the end of their careers. But it will be easy for fans of cricket to see a game in their own time zone

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WCRugger t1_jcvmimb wrote

It's actually a T20 Cricket League. Which are run over shorter schedules of around 6-8 weeks. Players tend to play across several leagues over the course of a year. So there's actually a decent chance of getting quality players involved. Particularly seeing as this is heavily linked to the Indoan Premier League which is the boggest league of its kind in the world drawing in the best players.

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ecphiondre t1_jcxi8lk wrote

The league already has Aaron Finch, Mitch Marsh, Nortje, de Kock, Cory Anderson. These are big names already.

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WCRugger t1_jcxidi3 wrote

And there will probably be a number of others as well. Sort of proves my point.

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RedRox t1_jcw82m3 wrote

Yep, exactly. IPL already contracts oversea's players for their league. And I'm sure players will jump at the chance (and money) to play in America.

People don't realise how much fun T20 cricket can be. They only have 20 overs (120 balls) to get as big a total as possible. So everyone wants to try and smash it out of the park.

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bayern_16 t1_jcvj3i6 wrote

I live in Chicago and we have 50-60 cricket clubs

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Tenpat t1_jcvvwul wrote

The USA has a large enough population that it can support a few teams for a niche sport like this.

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boston_shua t1_jcvejg4 wrote

Fuck no. There’s barely a market for professional soccer which is way less boring.

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treznor70 t1_jcwgkjd wrote

Test cricket and even one day cricket can be a bit slow until you get what it is. But T20 (which is what this is)? It's the length of a baseball game, but with ~200-400 runs scored. Doesn't sound boring to me.

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