World Cup: A limited field

Cricket's parochialism stands in stark contrasts to the global reach and fandom of football, highlighting the need for a reimagined future for the sport

By next week, interest around the Asian Games, where India has turned in a decent performance, will be overtaken by a tournament in which expectations from Team India are hitting fever pitch. But for all the excitement and anticipation that’s being stirred up in the media, here’s a reality check. As a global sporting event, World Cup Cricket is a parochial enterprise with limited reach.

Nothing reflected this better than the near-empty stadium at Ahmedabad for the inaugural match between defending champions England and New Zealand. Even assuming Brits or Kiwis would make the trip to India to follow their team, they could not have filled up a stadium with a capacity of 132,000. The Guardian reported that many overseas ticket holders were initially kept out on account of organisational glitches at the stadium, though some 45,000 tickets were sold, making it the best attended opening game of any 50-over World Cup. But local fans, who could have added critical mass, are waiting only for the clash with Pakistan at the same venue next Saturday, raising questions about attendance at matches in which India is not playing.

The parochialism driving the sport reflects a core weakness in the way the shorter version of the game is marketed.  The intense jingoism of World Cup cricket, as it is sold in India, the biggest market, has limited the full potential of its reach and popularity.

Incredibly, the tournament figures as the world’s fourth largest sporting event ahead of the Winter Olympics, the Asian Games, and the Rugby World Cup. Ahead of it are the Tour De France, the Fifa World Cup, and the Summer Olympics (this ranking covers only tournaments of a set duration). But the relatively high rank that the six-week World Cup cricket tournament gets is skewed by a demographic dividend in the shape of the huge fan-base in India alone, which gives it an audience reach of about 2.2 billion people.

This number pales before World Cup Football, which weighs in at number two behind the Summer Olympics but leads by huge margins in terms of a single-sport event. The Qatar edition, despite all the fierce controversy that preceded it, recorded a total TV viewership of 5 billion-plus. More to the point, no match saw empty stadiums — not even the third-place playoff between Croatia and Morocco. The difference between the two sporting events lies in the symbiotic relationship that has emerged between the major seasonal football tournaments — notably the European leagues — and the World Cup via global television broadcasting. This mutual local and global reinforcement has made it possible for audiences with no ethnic or national link to a team or a player to become fans.

Indians, Chinese, Africans and West Asians can count themselves unofficial members of, for example, Liverpool or Manchester City in the English Premier League, Real Madrid or Barcelona in La Liga or Bayern Munich from the Bundesliga. Citizens of nations that have never sent teams to the World Cup follow the tournament with near-religious zeal.

India is a good example. Every four years, Bengalis, Goans and Keralites will passionately transform themselves into bhakts of Brazil, France, Argentina, Spain, Germany, Portugal and so on. Hindus don’t think twice about adoring the Egyptian Muslim striker named Mohamed Salah or the Portuguese Roman Catholic Cristiano Ronaldo. Tribal rivalries here mean good-natured exchanges of insults between fans from opposing teams.

The Croatia versus Morocco third-place play-off, a nothing game by any standards, was watched worldwide because it was the last bow of the adored Croatian midfielder Luka Modric.  The same pattern is unlikely in World Cup cricket, even if fans do admire players from other teams. 

The difference in the quality of fan dynamics shows up in the money the respective sports attract. At Qatar, world champions Argentina took home $42 million in prize money. The World Cup cricket winning team will earn $4 million. The difference in the earnings of Fifa and the International Cricket Council from their respective World Cup tournaments are also millions apart.

The game-changer could be the T20 club leagues and T20 World Cup, where revenues and viewership are growing in leaps and bounds. The 2022 edition, for example, saw TV audiences of 1.68 billion, a number which seems small but decent for a tournament that is just 16 years old. Interestingly, the financial potential and popularity of this format has reached the US — the similarity with baseball may have something to do with it. The Indian Premier League (IPL), pioneer of tournaments in this format, has even attracted interest from US investment firms such as KKR Capital and TPG.  

The IPL, which drew on the English Premier League for its business model, has made it possible for Indians to worship foreign stars (though, sadly, not Pakistani players, who are pointlessly banned). Though purists may shudder, the T20 club leagues could well be the format of the future, giving cricket a far larger and genuinely global following.