BidWeek, reporting from Toronto – It’s an Olympics cricket tournament. It’s also part of a multi-faceted business deal that’s set to benefit key stakeholders who aren’t necessarily in it for the good of the Games.
The October 2023 announcement that cricket was set to be added to the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic program surprised many and confused countless others. In contrast to the other additional sports – baseball and softball, flag football, lacrosse and squash – a cricket match can’t even be identified by most mainstream sports fans across the United States.
The T20 version of the sport, a shorter version of cricket that seems to suit new fans, was chosen to feature at the Games.
Organizing committees are given the opportunity to add domestically popular sports to their programs helping to ensure increased local engagement while benefitting from the economics of already existing venues. So why cricket? On the surface the sport was proposed by LA 28 to help the International Olympic Committee (IOC) engage the Indian population – the world’s largest – where cricket is wildly popular and interest in the Olympics has been tepid. The financial opportunities for the IOC in India including broadcast and streaming revenues, sponsorship deals and the overall growth of the Games will be invaluable, benefitting the entire Olympic Movement and sport development around the world.
But there’s more, much more that those involved probably don’t want to talk about.
The cricket deal was put under the microscope earlier this month when LA 28 president Casey Wasserman said the event would likely be played on the east coast of the United States, addressing months of silence as to which venue would be used for the sport. He said this would be done to provide a friendlier time zone for Indian television viewers, and maximize ratings. This certainly clarifies that the sport is being staged for the benefit of a single nation, but is the time zone difference really consequential?
Though a large landmass, India sticks to a single time zone that is 12 hours and 30 minutes ahead of Los Angeles and nine hours and 30 minutes ahead of the east coast. Viewers in India could watch a 9:30am match in LA at 10:00pm locally. On the east coast, a more comfortable 11:00am match would air in prime time in India. But a 9:00pm match in Los Angeles could air at 9:30am in India, not a big problem that’s often solved by nations watching their favorite teams at far-away Olympics.
In the past, sports such as swimming and figure skating have adjusted the start times of finals significantly to accommodate distant television viewers. The COVID-delayed Tokyo 2020 Games staged swimming finals in the morning to allow Western viewers, specifically those in the United States, to watch the events in prime time.
Instead, LA 28 wants to move the event across a continent, but where on the east coast? There are no permanent cricket stadiums in the time zone but recent reports, including from London Times, indicate that New York is being given top consideration with two possible venue options: (1) The temporary Nassau County International Cricket Stadium on Long Island that was used to host the 2024 ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, since dismantled but could be resurrected for the Olympics; or (2) the planned Marine Park Cricket Stadium in Brooklyn that will serve as the home pitch for the MI New York of Major League Cricket (MLC). More on this later.
It’s notable that Los Angeles doesn’t have a permanent cricket stadium either, but it does have a MLC club, the Los Angeles Knight Riders, with plans to construct The Great Park Cricket Stadium in Orange County. Opportunities to build temporary facilities in Southern California also exist. There is no guarantee that planned stadiums on both coasts will be available in time for the 2028 Games, so the temporary facilities are important considerations.
Both Los Angeles and New York have a sizeable Indian diaspora, but the New York region is home to three times as many Indians – beneficial if trying to generate local excitement for the tournament. But wouldn’t immersion in the Olympic Games do the same? Cricket athletes who have been asked about the plans to move the matches thousands of kilometers away from the host city have expressed their disappointment in not being able to stay with other athletes in the Olympic Village or become involved in the overall Olympic experience.
Moving the tournament out of California doesn’t seem so compelling. So what’s going on?
Here’s what you haven’t already read:
Remember the planned stadium in Brooklyn that will host the MI New York (MI stands for Mumbai Indians) MLC cricket club? The team and the stadium-to-be are owned by Indiawin Sports, an enterprise controlled by conglomerate Reliance Industries that is owned by the family of Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani, one of the wealthiest people on the planet. Ambani is married to Nita Ambani, an IOC member with a direct line to the executives and president Thomas Bach.
Not only will Ambani’s teams benefit from the exposure an Olympic cricket tournament brings, but if it were to be held in New York his business could help stage the event and shine even more attention on his club.
So what’s in it for LA 28? A better tournament? Cost savings? The athlete experience? Maybe nothing.
But LA 28’s Casey Wasserman might have some connections that shouldn’t be overlooked.
Wasserman, who seems to have the final call on where cricket ends up, has a new stake in the sport through his Los Angeles based sports, music and entertainment marketing and talent management company Wasserman Group. But what’s most interesting about his Wasserman Cricket division is when he acquired the asset.
The LA 28 organizing committee evaluated prospective new sports over several months last year and the much-anticipated announcement on those chosen from among as many as nine applicants had been promised September 8, 2023 in a meeting agenda published only a week earlier. But two days ahead of that planned communication the IOC canceled the Executive Board discussions intended to finalize the decision and no new date was offered.
“Due to ongoing discussions between the IOC and the [LA 2028] Organizing Committee, the Olympic Program Commission has not yet had the opportunity to hold its meeting to prepare its final recommendation for the IOC EB,” an IOC statement read.
“As a consequence, the sports program for the Olympic Games LA28 will be discussed during a later IOC [Executive Board] meeting, to take place at a date to be decided.”
No other information was provided as to why plans that seemed finalized were now set to change.
Only a week later United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC) CEO Sarah Hirshland told journalists on a conference call “that discussion has been delayed and postponed, at this point indefinitely. As those conversations continue we don’t yet have a date for the future decisions and discussions.”
But things seem to get settled over the next four weeks and on October 9, just before the IOC was set to meet at its annual Session in Mumbai, India, LA 28 announced that five new sports – including cricket – had been proposed to the IOC for acceptance. The Executive Board approved the choices October 13 and the IOC members voted to accept them during the Session in India October 16.
Now let’s overlap another timeline, perhaps unrelated, but definitely worth discussing.
On October 3, Wasserman (the business) announced the completed acquisition of CSM Sport & Entertainment occurring less than a week before the finalization of the cricket proposal. It was part of a Wasserman buying spree, acquiring assets across its various lines of business. Whether directly connected or not, work by Wasserman (the business, and perhaps the LA 28 President) to finalize the CSM deal was happening at the same time as the work by Wasserman (the LA 28 President) to secure cricket’s place in the Olympics.
You might ask “why is this important?”
In October 2023 the businesses of Wasserman and CSM seemed well aligned, but it wasn’t until March 26 this year that we discovered what might have been on Wasserman’s (the President) mind early last October while contemplating cricket in the Olympics. On that date a press release by Wasserman (the business) announced that Phoenix Management Group – known as the leader in British cricket talent management – was acquired as part of the CSM deal and was being rebranded as a new division: Wasserman Cricket.
The press release boasted “Phoenix’s roster includes some of the world’s most prolific cricketers.”
You can judge whether there is a conflict of interest here or if any of the parties were harmed because of it, but what is clear is that Casey Wasserman finalized one of the most important sports inclusions in the Olympics on the same week he added a major consulting firm for that sport into his businesses portfolio.
Now to New York. Is Wasserman similarly conflicted by moving Olympic cricket to Ambani’s market, or even into the Indian mogul’s stadium?
And where does the IOC stand if Wasserman is indeed basing major Olympic decisions on his own personal interests?
In short, it’s likely that the IOC fully supports Wasserman’s strategy as it aligns with their own interests.
Here’s the long part:
Since the conclusion of the COVID-delayed Tokyo 2020 Summer Games the IOC has lost all three Japanese TOP (The Olympic Partner) sponsors – those global partners who funnel hundreds of millions of dollars into the Olympic movement in exchange for exclusive worldwide marketing rights. Toyota, Panasonic and Bridgestone each ended their contracts leaving only 12 others to support the IOC’s massive budget that helps support sport, athletes and major events around the world.
To fill the gap, IOC marketeers are actively looking for new sponsors with deep pockets and a big opportunity.
Ambani’s Reliance Industries is a huge conglomerate offering products and services in energy, retail, telecommunications, sports and entertainment. It also has a philanthropical arm and its Reliance Foundation supports education and sport for youth in underprivileged families. The IOC and Reliance have had an almost flirtatious relationship for years, leading to Nita Ambani – chair of the foundation – being elected as an IOC member in 2016.
Last October at the Mumbai IOC Session where cricket was formally added to the LA 28 program, President Bach was gushing to his members about Ambani and the Reliance Foundation saying “I’m really deeply impressed by Reliance and her team because you see kids from all over India in this centre.”
“And most of them are coming from underprivileged families and they are being offered education and schooling. But at the same time, they are given the opportunity to train and to prepare for becoming an athlete, a high-level athlete.”
Then, during the Paris 2024 Games IOC’s marketing director Anne-Sophie Voumard said “we would love to welcome a first new TOP sponsor from India and I am sure that this is going to happen very, very soon,” hinting that discussions were already underway, perhaps even during the Games.
It seems the IOC needs India more than India needs the Olympics.
Along with a potential sponsorship deal, the IOC is now actively negotiating an agreement with broadcast rightsholders in India and Southeast Asia. The inclusion of cricket in 2028 and its likely return to the subsequent Brisbane 2032 edition could push Paris 2024 broadcaster, Mumbai-based Viacom18, to close a two-Games deal at a significantly higher value with hundreds of millions more viewers now expected to watch.
The mechanics of how cricket is presented at the LA 28 Games will certainly be a topic for discussion during these negotiations, and the two may indeed be intertwined.
And one more thing: Reliance owns a majority share of Viacom18.
So Ambani and Reliance are sitting at all ends of the table during negotiations for sponsorships, broadcast rights and where cricket might be staged at LA 28. India is clearly a big part of the future of the Olympic Movement and cricket is just a crack in the curtain allowing us to see what’s going on within the IOC, an organization that has lost most of its transparency.
This is not necessarily nefarious though, arguments can be made that it is all just shrewd business in the high-stakes world of sport and the Olympics. That is, unless discussions over India’s proposed 2036 Olympic bid enter the picture.
India is in the hunt to host the next available edition of the Summer Games, a campaign that was solidified when Indian prime minister Narendra Modi promised to “leave no stone unturned” in his nation’s pursuit when he spoke to IOC delegates in Mumbai last year. Potential host Ahmadabad has already begun to develop a masterplan even though the Indian city has yet to be singled out as the nominated bidder. Those plans need to come from the National Olympic Committee (NOC), in this case the Indian Olympic Association (IOA).
But the IOA is currently in shambles with an ongoing leadership dispute this month forcing the IOC to reprimand the organization for poor governance. Olympic Solidarity payments – the revenue share sent to NOCs to support athletes and sport programs – have been withheld from the IOA until the issues are worked out. Further sanctions could follow, including suspension.
This fits a pattern for the IOA, already set back by governance violations twice in the past decade.
Under these circumstances and among the strong field of applicants that the IOC numbers in the double-digits, India’s bid for the 2036 Olympic Games and its side campaign to host the 2030 Youth Olympic Games should be considered nonstarters. If the IOC executives begin to spin otherwise, we can assume the Olympic bid has already joined the overall India discussion – and that will be a problem.
But for now, it’s just big business – and outsiders trying to connect the dots while the IOC offers very little transparency.
It’s just an Olympics cricket tournament.
