Last Updated on 41 minutes ago by Charbel Coorey
The International Cricket Council (ICC) will hold its quarterly meeting in Bali from November 13 to 15. High on the agenda will be discussing the findings of McKinsey & Co.’s report regarding the future of cricket.
Earlier this year, the ICC hired the management consultant firm to conduct a strategic review of where the game is at and where it is heading. One of the key discussion items is diversifying revenue streams as the sport is heavily reliant on broadcast revenue.
ICC to discuss findings from McKinsey and Co. Report: What are other sources of revenue that cricket can tap into?
According to Cricbuzz, the McKinsey and Co. report identifies new opportunities for revenue, including greater corporate sponsorship, a mobile gaming project and data monetisation.
The latter two are long-term projects. FIFA currently generates significant revenue through data, and cricket is reportedly looking at the same. At the Football World Cup, every entry, purchase and login formed part of a database that sponsors can tap into even after the tournament ends.
ICC CEO Sanjog Gupta is on record saying that cricket needs to diversify its revenue.
“Some of these revenue streams are still in in their exploratory stage and will be only unlocked once cricket’s structures evolve with developments in the world of technology and what they enable in terms of consumption,” Gupta said at SportsPro London earlier this year.
“They [the revenue streams] will come to bear only in the next three to five years.”
Gupta also said that cricket has an opportunity for growth especially in data and gaming. While media rights remain important, the CEO said the sport shouldn’t be fully reliant on them.
“Cricket is a deeply under-leveraged sport as far as its commercial value is concerned, and that is largely on account of how dependent or how focused it has been on the growth of media rights revenues,” he said.
“On one side, we have this massive opportunity where the sport clearly derives a significant share of its revenue or commercial value from media rights and is potentially under-commercialised on many other streams of revenue.
“And on the other hand, you also have significant shifts in the sports economy itself, which will force a recalibration of how those revenues are distributed and which products garner a higher share of that revenue. So I think media rights revenue will see structural shifts going forward.”
ICC to focus on further growth in women’s cricket plus other high-potential markets
Another item on the agenda is further growing women’s cricket. It has come a long way over the last 15 years, but the ICC identifies further growth opportunities and aims for cricket to be the most popular women’s sport in the world.
Currently, the game’s annual revenue is estimated at around $3.5-3.8 billion per year. The ICC has aspirations to raise this to $10 billion. To do so, cricket needs to successfully tap into bigger markets including the USA and China.
