NFL's global competition includes cricket
The NFL wants to become a global force. And the primary competition is soccer.
But there's another sport that is more popular than our most popular sport, too.
As noted by John Ourand of Puck, the Indian Premier League's final match generated 169 million viewers. That's more than 30 million more than the Super Bowl, and the most-watched cricket event in Indian history.
India's population exceeds 1.4 billion. That's more than three times the size of the United States. So there's greater saturation of the American market by American football.
Still, as strange as it sounds, there are bigger sporting events than the Super Bowl.
Ourand raises the question of whether it's time for cricket to make a dent in the American market. But the broader reality for the NFL is that there's plenty of work to do to take a dent out of other sports that currently generate far more interest beyond our borders.
If the NFL can pull it off, a billion-dollar business will become a trillion-dollar business.
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