Michael Clarke<\/a> on his Beyond23 Podcast that cricket \u201cain\u2019t happening in America in the next 50 years.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cYou look Major League Cricket (MLC). It just finished. I called up my friend Chris Gayle. \u2018Chris, I see you in Texas. What\u2019s the atmosphere like?\u2019 He said, \u2018my brother it\u2019s dead\u2019. There\u2019s nobody in the stadium,\u201d Modi told Clarke on his podcast, as quoted by The Indian Express.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was nobody in the stadium. They think that the cricket going to the Olympics is going to fuel America. It ain\u2019t happening now, this decade, next decade, next 50 years.\u201d<\/p>\n
According to Modi, the main reason behind it is the fact that fans don\u2019t have the big stars playing in the US, and as a result, they are not willing to spend big money to watch the game or even invest in the league from a business point of view. He remarked that viewership needs to be built before it can be ascertained that cricket is amongst the popular sports in the USA.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI am a businessman expat sitting anywhere in the world in America, San Francisco, Los Angeles. Am I going to see somebody called Virat Singh playing against Dushyant Singh? Against Lalit Singh. I\u2019ve never heard of them. All that I want is to watch and spend my money to watch Virat Kohli. Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Michael Clarke, Brett Lee,\u201d Modi said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cDoes anybody watch basketball in the UK, in Europe, in Africa, in India? No. The NBA. Does anybody watch the NFL in any other country? No, it\u2019s the USA. Does anybody watch baseball in any other country? No. Does anybody even watch football in the US, which is a global sport? They\u2019ve taken Messi after so many years\u2026 I was a major investor in Major League Soccer when I owned ESPN in 1995-96. I lost so much money it didn\u2019t work. It\u2019s not going to work even now.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2026Now, India Pakistan played in New York. We filled the stadium. Did anybody fill any other stadium in the World Cup that just happened in America? No. Does anybody watch Ranji Trophy in India? No. Does anybody watch local leagues anywhere? No. Now people watch star players. If there are no stars, no Indian stars, why will the Indian expatriate population or the Commonwealth population watch major league cricket?\u201d Modi added.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Notably, the ICC is banking hard on the LA28 Olympics for growing cricket popularity in the US after the efforts in the 2024 T20 World Cup blew hot and cold.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Modi said that cricket in the USA won\u2019t ever work without the big cricket stars from India Lalit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":94426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-94425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}