T20 cricket: Inside the race for the next billion-dollar league

Mint

4 days ago

Bengaluru: On 25 May, Zimbabwe's 39-year-old all-rounder Sikandar Raza made headlines, but not just because he scored the winning runs for Lahore Qalanders in the Pakistan Super League (PSL) final at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. Less than 24 hours earlier, he had been in Nottingham, donning Test whites for his country and fighting a losing battle against England at Trent Bridge. His frantic transcontinental double-duty isn't just a curiosity; it is emblematic of the T20 cricket era we live in, one where jet lag is a minor inconvenience in the face of opportunity.
Raza's back-to-back assignments across formats and continents capture the breakneck expansion of the global T20 ecosystem. As of mid-2025, there are 17 active T20 leagues around the world. This year will see the debut of the European T20 Premier League, a tri-board venture from Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands, backed by Bollywood star Abhishek Bachchan. If 2008 was the birth of the franchise era, 2025 might go down as the year it became a full-blown arms race.
The stakes are rising. In February, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) concluded the sale of stakes in all eight franchises of The Hundred, raising £975 million and valuing the four-year-old 100-ball competition at nearly $1.3 billion. In March, reports surfaced of Saudi Arabia exploring a 'global league" to disrupt and reorganize cricket's fragmented calendar. April brought news of New Zealand Cricket acquiring part-ownership in a Major League Cricket (MLC) franchise in the US, a first for any board.
Leagues that once seemed insular and region-focused are now recalibrating. The PSL is considering expanding from six to eight teams. Australia's Big Bash League (BBL) is weighing privatization. What was once an experimental format for a sport has become its primary engine of growth: commercially, culturally, and strategically.
Yet, even with valuations and ambitions soaring, there remains a collective acknowledgement of the elephant in the room: the Indian Premier League (IPL). With an estimated value of $16.4 billion, the IPL is not just number one, it's in a league of its own. The pressing question is no longer who can catch up, but rather, who can carve out a definitive second place.
A strategic asset
Australia was a reluctant convert to T20 cricket, its traditionalist leanings wary of what this shorter format would do to the skills and sanctity of Test cricket. But the BBL's launch in 2010 changed that conversation.
BBL general manager Alistair Dobson tells Mint. 'It was founded on an insight that cricket in Australia was becoming less and less relevant for kids and younger Australians. It was a strategic insight that said, 'if we don't do something, then cricket is going to attract a narrower market'."
Former New Zealand fast bowler and cricket commentator Danny Morrison, now a Queenslander, describes the BBL as a league that was 'slow to the party". During telephonic and in-person conversations with Mint, Morrison recalled the late cricketing legend Shane Warne's contribution to the league's rise. He says, 'Warne had retired after IPL 2011, and then he came back in 2013-14, and there was a whole razzmatazz around Warnie coming back, mic'd up, bowling to Brendon McCullum, and telling commentators what he was going to do, and doing it the next ball. Incredible."
Cut to 2025, by popular consensus, the Cricket Australia-owned BBL would be right up there, leading the race for the number two spot. Sources told Mint that the BBL has all the fundamentals of a 'solid league" and that, should it hit the private market, it could 'easily fetch a valuation upwards of $2-3 billion." They pointed to the league's ability to draw large crowds and 'occupy the Australian sporting summer" as a compelling investment case.
Unlike the IPL, the BBL does not include privately-owned franchises. The teams are owned and operated by Cricket Australia and its members—state associations such as Cricket New South Wales and Cricket Victoria.
The BBL's Dobson says the league has outgrown its startup phase, and is now a mature product with second-generation fans. 'It's been a pretty interesting 15 years—some rapid growth in the first seven seasons, then a period of consolidation, and now maturity. The past three seasons have been incredibly rewarding. Covid knocked us down a little, but we've had good growth year-on-year, our crowds are getting back up to 22-23,000 per game on average and some big crowds of over 40-50,000."
He adds, 'Broadcasters want big crowds, sponsors want big crowds, and the players want to play in front of big crowds. The starting point for us is always: what do we need to do to get more people into the game?"
Cricket Australia says Big Bash is Australia's 'most watched sports league on a per-game basis" with average attendance for its most recent BBL edition growing 20% year-on-year to 770,000 viewers nationally."
This is particularly significant because, unlike India, where the IPL (and cricket) has a free run over sports viewership, Australia's sports broadcast market is fiercely competitive, with rival sports leagues such as the Australian Football League (AFL) and the National Rugby League (NRL).
Which then begs the question, why is the BBL not private yet? The answer is a touch complex, given that it has, over its 15-year history, dipped its toes in the private market at least twice, if not thrice. However, it eventually set those ideas aside.
'It's encouraging for us that there's interest from different organizations in getting involved with the Big Bash. The important thing for us is that the strength and success of the league means it is an important asset for Australian cricket," Dobson adds.
In simpler terms, that means using the profits from the BBL to invest in the most foundational levels of Australian cricket: the grassroots, the pathways, and development programmes.
At the broader level, the BBL faces stiff competition from South Africa's three-season-old SA20, where IPL teams own all the franchises. The person quoted above says, 'There is a battle to own the winter calendar, and South Africa has shown its ability to attract the top players and deliver an equally strong league," pointing to a potential vulnerability. Pair that with the high taxes that Australia levies, and a slightly different picture emerges. The ILT20 in the UAE, which lacks the crowds seen elsewhere, makes up for it with tax-free income for players and a good winter break with family.
Beating saturation
In the Northern Hemisphere, Vikram Banerjee is a busy man. As the managing director of the ECB's The Hundred competition, Banerjee has presided over one of the more consequential phases for English cricket in recent years. The 100-ball competition, a further evolution of the T20 format, is what England is betting its franchise-based league ambitions on, with more than an assist from billionaire IPL franchise owners, private equity funds, and Silicon Valley technology honchos.
'The Hundred has done brilliant things, in terms of what it's done in this country, how it's grown the sport, brought families in, how it's redefined, to an extent, women's sport. That allowed us to see that the ceiling for this tournament is sky high," Banerjee told Mint over a Microsoft Teams conversation in early May. 'The opportunity that we have is to take the tournament for what it has done today, to compete with the IPL, and the best sports products that exist in the world."
If Australia's pitch is that of leveraging cricket as a 'strategic asset", The Hundred wants to lean into England's appeal in the annals of the game. 'We have the stadiums. We have a product that seems to be resonating with a fan base that is already there," he says. 'You combine that with August, when not many people can play cricket or sport globally, and a time zone advantage. You play at 3 pm on a Saturday in England, that's dinner time in India, and lunch time in America. It means it can be around the world," Banerjee adds.
To get ahead of the pack, The Hundred is counting on three major pull factors. One, bring the best players in the world, which is where he reckons, 'eighteen leagues is one too many, because so many of these best players cannot play 400 days a year. It doesn't work." Two, sound commercials. And three, building a connection. 'You need to be able to either create or have a fan base. England, today, has the second-highest fan base for cricket in the world, at around 14 million people."
All of this, Banerjee reckons, gives The Hundred a strong case. 'The Venn diagram of these three elements is what leagues that are going to succeed will deliver," he adds.
Satyan Gajwani, vice chairman of Times Internet Ltd (TIL) and part of the Nikesh Arora-led Silicon Valley consortium that will own The Hundred's London Spirit franchise, told Mint that investors will 'start engaging more meaningfully to impact the 2026 season." However, he adds, 'We are excited to be partners with the Home of Cricket at Lords, and will look to grow the franchise and The Hundred to a new level."
The American league
This time last year, the US was preparing to co-host the 2024 T20 World Cup, which the Rohit Sharma-led Indian team eventually won. But even before big-time international cricket arrived on its shores, the US was plotting its coup in the global T20 ecosystem with Major League Cricket (MLC). In a way, the most intriguing contender is also the most unconventional.
The six-franchise league, with four teams either fully or partially owned by IPL franchises, had just concluded its first full season (2023) and earned $8 million in revenue, exceeding expectations. However, by the time the second season began, the league had experienced significant tailwinds. The US national cricket team, mainly comprising South Asian immigrants, had shocked the world in its backyard, by defeating Pakistan in last year's T20 World Cup and advancing to the next stage.
It was a big statement. So much so that some of cricket's biggest stars, including Australia's World Cup-winning captain Pat Cummins, the centurion in the World Cup final, Travis Head, and teammate Glenn Maxwell signed up for the competition. It was no coincidence that they chose the US. After all, it is the home of global professional sport, with a market valued at over $87 billion. Cricket, however, is targeting a very focused delta of 5-10 million people, primarily those of South Asian descent, who are also among the highest per-capita earners in the country.
Gajwani, also a co-founder of the MLC, states that the league was 'certainly in the top five leagues in the world," but in reality, 'there's a large gap between the IPL and everyone else." He outlines the MLC's goals and prospects as 'unique", given that it is the 'only league operating in a market where cricket isn't yet an established sport". However, he adds, 'The US is the largest sports market in the world, with a wealthy and passionate local existing fanbase, and with the most global tailwinds behind it. So, in terms of growth potential, it's probably the highest."
To this end, the league appointed cricket administration veteran Johnny Grave as its chief executive officer earlier this year. Grave had previously led Cricket West Indies for nearly seven years. 'I think that's exciting, because he is a mover and shaker, knows how the business operates; he's a great operator, and he loves the game," says Morrison.
The tournament, which has primarily been hosted at the Grand Prairie in Texas and North Carolina's Morrisville, will see the addition of two venues this season—Oakland, California, marking professional cricket's debut on the West Coast and in Silicon Valley. The league says the nine matches at the Oakland Coliseum will contribute $3 million to the local economy. It will also head to Miami during the competition's penultimate week, with a double header on the Fourth of July.
This comes right on the heels of the 2028 Olympic Games, which Los Angeles will host, and where cricket will mark its re-entry after over a century. Which also means an additional focus on infrastructure, and another potential venue in LA. 'Over the coming years, we should see new stadiums mushrooming across the country. These are critical to growth and unlocking more fans," Gajwani adds.
The natural selection era
With newer leagues mushrooming and the fragmentation of the global T20 ecosystem, cricket will likely move into an era of 'natural selection," as The Hundred's Banerjee puts it.
That proliferation of leagues has led to a sort of tiering within the ecosystem, with the IPL on top, followed by the BBL, The Hundred, SA20, Caribbean Premier League, Pakistan Super League and Major League Cricket. The third tier includes the UAE's ILT20, the BPL, and the Lanka Premier League.
'Each of these leagues today, to be successful, is chasing the same cricket fan, the same set of players, and I don't see how that is sustainable, and I feel men's cricket is at a point where it is hitting saturation," says Banerjee.
The billion-dollar valuation may be a milestone, but the real prize is something more profound: relevance in a rapidly evolving sporting world.
And as Sikandar Raza's weekend adventure shows, that world never sleeps.