New Delhi: Seattle Orcas CEO Hemant Dua believes USA’s win over Pakistan in the 2024 T20 World Cup has played a pivotal role in helping cricket get its first foot in the door. The win helped USA cricket take a significant initial step towards achieving a goal, which, in the bigger picture, is to make the sport popular in a country where it is in unchartered territory.“Cricket has grown overall. It was always on the straps for very long here, but it was more at the amateur level in the USA. The cricket board has gone through a lot of challenges. I think off late, ICC started investing in it and seeing cricket in the USA as the frontier they want to conquer,” Dua told TimesofIndia.com.“The 2024 World Cup came, it did really well and had a huge impact from an economic point of view. It helped cricket to a certain extent definitely because USA beating Pakistan was like a dream come true for the USA guys; it helped the growth of cricket,” he said.Dua says with Major League Cricket (MLC) successfully entering its third season, the next goal is to get cricket into the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) so that the sport will be in the mainstream.“Largely, cricket is played by South Asians and a little bit of the Commonwealth population like the English, South Africans, and all those. It hasn’t really gone into the mainstream as yet, and the challenge remains: how do you make it a growing mainstream sport, especially focused on youth and colleges,” he said.“In the US, unlike other parts of the world, if you’re not part of the college system, the sport really doesn’t grow. You know, because college sport is the base of growth here for everything, right? So that’s how all sports kind of grow in that direction. Once you become part of the NCAA, you grow automatically; that is how sports grow.“Ideally, this should be the next step, but it’s a combination where everyone will have to come on the same platform. When I say everyone, I mean USA Cricket, MLC, Minor League Cricket, all have to come on the same platform, and one of the biggest challenges for becoming part of college sports is Title IX. Title IX means you’ve got to have equivalent or some form of women’s cricket playing, right? Without women’s sport, you don’t get recognition.“In my region, which is the Pacific Northwest, there are girls playing regularly, so we’re trying to grow. I mean, there are various leagues that have come up at U-19 and U-16 levels for boys and girls both. The boys’ sport is growing, but it’s small numbers,” he said.With cricket finding a place at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics, Dua is hopeful that most of the MLC franchises will have their own cricket stadium, and it will take cricket to the next level.“What will make a huge impact is now when all six teams will have their own stadium ready. It is part of the contract with MLC that each team will build their stadium by 2028. With the Olympics happening in 2028, there is going to be some noise where people will get to know about the sport more,” he said.For the expansion of cricket in the USA, the franchises are also banking on targetting the Indian population.“If you look at the population, approximately 20 million South Asians live in the USA. It is a pretty significant number. Indians have the highest net worth individuals. The Indian income group is much higher compared to the average income group in the USA, so there’s a spending capacity there. So can we tap into that, can we tap into that dream?” he said.Dua, who has been part of the Delhi Daredevils (now Delhi Capitals) for ten years since the inception of the Indian Premier League (IPL) in 2008, admitted that all six franchises are currently making losses, but he strongly believes that the MLC as a product is sustainable in the larger scheme of things.“Everyone’s making losses in the MLC now. Even in the IPL, for 10 years, everybody made losses until the 11th year broadcast contract came on the floor,” he said.
The Indian income group is much higher compared to the average income group in the USA, so there’s a spending capacity there
Hemant Dua
“I strongly believe that MLC is sustainable. As I said, everything depends largely on the media contracts. Right now, we are on Willow, which is a streaming platform, so we’re opening up new markets. In each region, I have tied up with a regional sport network along with Willow. We’ve opened up with Root and Fox 13; we’re going to relay our matches similarly in other regions.“These are obviously not going to help us make money, but the idea is to ensure that more people get to see the game. For the first time now, Amazon has also done a deal, so they’ll broadcast the Sunday night games on Amazon. It’s opening up, but I think the real test will come when the new broadcast contract comes in, and whoever takes it, whether it’s Willow or whether it’s another channel or whoever it is, takes up and depending on what value that generates, that will tell you in which direction we are actually moving.“
