Shah Rukh Khan owned Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) have decided to invest in Major League Cricket, the multi-million dollar T20 tournament that’s in progress. This can be considered as a major boost for the future of American Cricket.
Kolkata Knight Riders already have a franchise in IPL, in Trinidad and Tobago (CPL) and South Africa with talks in progress with England Cricket Board’s ‘The Hundred’. American Cricket Enterprises (ACE) announced the decision with Vijay Srinivasan, one of the co-founders at ACE, calling the partnership with the Knight Riders a watershed moment in their plan to make cricket mainstream in the US.
This latest investment will allow them an opening into the largest media market in the world. The association with Knight Riders is seen as a major development for the ACE, which aims to make cricket big in the US.
“For several years now, we have been expanding the Knight Riders brand globally and closely watching the potential for T20 cricket in the US. We are convinced that Major League Cricket has all the pieces in place to execute its plans and we look forward to making our partnership an enormous success in the coming years,” Shah Rukh Khan said in a statement.
“Even though cricket is not a mainstream sport in the U.S., the size of the diaspora and the appetite for cricket is so strong that the U.S. is the second-largest market to consume cricket content, after India,” Knight Riders Group CEO Venky Mysore said.
“There is a large enough market for cricket in the US,” said Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore
Venky Mysore, CEO of the Knight Riders franchise, admitted that the franchise has been receiving numerous offers to invest in different sporting leagues on a monthly basis.
Explaining the franchise’s decision to join the ACE, Mysore was “The US being the largest media market in the world and the proliferation of the commonwealth diaspora provides a unique opportunity. We believe there is a large enough market for cricket. There are brands in the US who would look at cricket as a platform to advertise and build activation plans and marketing plans around our product.”
“The combination of Bollywood and T20 cricket has been extremely successful in other markets, and we’re looking to leverage that to the extent we can in content creation and the merger of entertainment and cricket,” ACE co-founder Vijay Srinivasan said
The report said, apart from pumping in $15-20 million dollars in equity and getting big names to feature in the league, the Knight Riders think tank will also play a role in the governance system and the economic model of MLC.
