da bet esporte： LA28 director Niccolo Campriani tags the decision “a game-changer for the Olympic movement”, while ICC chair Greg Barclay reiterates cricket is “popular, but we have looked to continue to grow”
da fazobetai： Nagraj Gollapudi17-Oct-2023The lure of the US market and the massive diaspora from the Indian subcontinent are the twin factors that convinced organisers that T20 cricket was destined to be part of the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics (LA28). That is the collective viewpoint shared by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), the LA28 local organising committee and the ICC.For decades the ICC has looked to tap into the US market, which it has identified as being behind only India in commercial terms. That’s why the ICC sold media rights for the 2024-27 cycle separately for the USA last year. While the value of rights – not disclosed – is understood to be significantly below what the ICC had desired, the global body decided to have the USA as co-hosts for the 2024 men’s T20 World Cup along with the West Indies. Three venues in New York, Dallas and Florida will host about 19 matches at the World Cup next year.That was the major step the ICC took to signal how serious it was about getting cricket to LA28. Simultaneously, the successful launch of Major League Cricket (MLC) this summer, in Texas and North Carolina, provided enough indication to the IOC that there is a growing audience for cricket in the US.Related
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Speaking in Mumbai on Monday, after the second day of the IOC Session, where T20 cricket’s inclusion at LA28 was confirmed, IOC president Thomas Bach said that the game’s global appeal and growing influence in the USA could not be ignored. “We have to see the first argument and the most important argument is: we have seen the growing international importance of cricket,” Bach said. “The Olympic Games want to represent and want to incorporate the most popular sports worldwide. And here it came together that this sport also has a growing importance in United States. Therefore, this proposal was very much welcome.”On Friday, after the IOC’s executive board had ratified LA28’s proposal to add five new sports including cricket to the roster, Bach had pointed out that Indians provide the second-most hits on the IOC’s social-media handles, highlighting their interest in the Olympics. Indian broadcaster Viacom18 had bought the rights to broadcast the Olympics for US$ 31 million, according to the , between 2022-24.These numbers, which are bound to peak with cricket now part of the Games, have hinted at the financial benefits the IOC could derive from the Indian market, but Bach disapproved of such a claim. “This [financial benefit] is not a consideration which comes there in the first line. This can be the consequence.”ICC chair: ‘We are popular, but we have looked to continue to grow ‘While the ICC has highlighted how boarding the Olympics train will take T20 cricket to untapped destinations, thus enabling the growth of the sport, the question gathering momentum is: how is that possible when only six teams will feature in LA28?ICC chairperson Greg Barclay, who attended the IOC Session on Monday, was confident it would. “I do [believe it will grow the game],” Barclay told the media. “The Olympic movement sits across most countries in the world. So to have cricket there will be a great opportunity to grow the game, particularly in areas that we are perhaps under-represented. It’s a great outcome. And it’s a win-win for both [cricket and] the Olympics – it [the IOC] can see the opportunity to access areas that they’ve maybe been under-represented like here, [in] South Asia. It is very symbiotic.”Considering cricket boasts of an audience of supposedly two-plus billion, with the sport hugely popular in the Commonwealth countries, Barclay was asked why the ICC still wanted to enter the Olympics. “We consider ourselves a sport that is represented globally, but there are areas that aren’t represented as well as they could be,” he said. “The US is one of those, but there are others as well. Joining the Olympic movement will help raise the profile of the sport even further. So yes, we are popular, it’s a fast growing team sport, but we have looked to continue to grow and offer the sport to fans, athletes and members right across the globe. So this helps us to do that.”The inaugural MLC season saw large crowds in attendance•Sportzpics
LA28 chair: ‘A mistake if we didn’t include cricket’Casey Wasserman, LA28’s chairperson, has been a fan of cricket ever since he experienced the “electric” atmosphere watching an IPL match in person in 2010. He is convinced that cricket will be a success at LA28.”From the very beginning of [LA] getting the [2028] Olympics, cricket has been on the list of sports we were excited to think about,” Wasserman told the media on Monday. “As we went through the process, it became quite obvious that we’d be making a mistake if we didn’t include it. So we’re happy to engage all 2.5 billion fans, hope they tune in, they watch, they come to Los Angeles and watch the best cricket in the world played in Los Angeles for the first time in the Olympics in a long time.”‘Women’s cricket played a critical role’Wasserman’s colleague Niccolo Campriani, the LA28 director, travelled to Birmingham in the summer of 2022 to watch the Commonwealth Games. A former triple-gold winner in shooting at the Olympics, Campriani, who is from Italy, was keen to watch women’s T20 cricket, which had returned to the Commonwealth Games fold.”The Commonwealth Games was just amazing,” Campriani told the media on Monday. “We all loved it. We got a glimpse of what Commonwealth cricket can be in in LA context. We were not planning to fly to an IPL game. That observation was absolutely critical. So yeah, women’s cricket played a critical role.”Campriani, who has trained with and competed with Indian Olympic legend Abhinav Bindra, could not hold back his excitement about cricket coming to the Olympics. “It’s a game-changer for the Olympic movement. The idea was really to create that perfect combination of American sport to be showcased to the world, but also introducing global sports that are not as developed in the US market. And I feel like the stars have aligned with Major League Cricket that started this year as well as the T20 World Cup coming in 2024.”A lot of finer details – ranging from the qualification process to squad sizes and venues – will be worked out over the next several years. Campriani said he wouldn’t bother about all those questions right now. “As an athlete [myself], it’s going to be life-changing. I don’t know how many young athletes right now are playing cricket in this exact moment. They can chase an Olympic dream now.”
