USA t20 threatens English season

not good news for English FC cricket.
i also do not know what they mean by monitoring KP situation....looks like they are negotiating with KP to participate
From KP's point of view...gives him more cushion and muscle to negotiate

USA t20 threatens English season

David Hopps and Peter Della Penna

September 1, 2012

The Americans are coming - and it spells a further threat for England's traditional cricketing summer © AFP


Features : 'T20 is a product that fits the American market'

News : Wyness brought in to lead US T20 project


Teams: England | United States of America

England's traditional cricketing summer, already under siege from the expanding ambitions of IPL, must face up to another unwelcome challenge next week when meetings take place in London to promote a United States Twenty20 league planned to launch next July with a host of international stars.

The league will be launched in direct competition to the English season with ambitions to attract many of the world's top stars for what Neil Maxwell, one of the main proponents, is presenting to the States as "baseball on steroids."

Maxwell also freely admitted that USA promoters are monitoring tense negotiations between the ECB and Kevin Pietersen, which will determine whether he has an England future. Maxwell told ESPNcricinfo: "We haven't spoken to Pietersen as yet. We are keen to work through the Boards to ensure the appropriate processes a followed. Once his position and ours is clarified we will no doubt chat."

Pietersen's choice of whether he commits himself to a serious future on the Test circuit or becomes an itinerant player, making a fortune on the Twenty20 circuit, could now not be more stark.

England will be slap bang in the middle of an Ashes summer, and will automatically be unavailable, but if UST20 succeeds it will cause further disruption for a county circuit already struggling to find overseas players of quality, including for a long-standing t20 tournament that is struggling to compete with newer, brasher competitors.

While the ECB continues to agonise over the future make-up of its t20 competition, which earlier this week lost its sponsor, Friends Life, promoters from the United States are heading for London to begin the tender process for six inaugural franchises, with ambitions to grow to as many as ten by 2016,

The league would most likely get underway after the conclusion of the ICC Champions Trophy, which takes runs from June 6-23 in England. The 2013 Ashes Series then follows, which means that top international stars from Australia and England would be unavailable but players from other countries might be tempted by the prospect of coming to play in America.

Cricket Holdings America, a joint venture headed by the USA Cricket Association and New Zealand Cricket, has also declared ambitions for the USA to apply and secure hosting rights for future ICC events, including the ICC World Twenty20 within the next 10 years.

In addition to taking bids for franchises starting this month, CHA also plans to host exhibition matches in the USA next year between imported stars and local talent.

The population in the USA with South Asian background has doubled in ten years, leaving promoters convinced that the time is right to launch what will initially be a league relying entirely on imported talent.

Maxwell, a CHA director, told The Times this week that the success of ESPNcricinfo in the United States was further proof that a market exists. There is little pretence, however, about educating an American audience, initially at least, about the finer points of the game.

"Our marketing has to appeal to mainstream America," he said. "It's about promoting an entertainment product. Almost remove the reference to cricket and create a thing called Twenty20 that competes with movies. Link it to Hollywood and Bollywood and provide all the razzmatazz that goes with it."

CHA hopes for the league to grow to as many as 10 franchises by 2016. The first season, reports suggest, will be played primarily in New York and San Francisco. New York has thriving West Indian and South Asian immigrant populations, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens, while the San Francisco Bay Area includes Silicon Valley, where thousands of South Asians have immigrated over the years for work in the software and technology industries.

If the league does launch franchises in New York and San Francisco, it would be highly probable that matches in those cities would be played on artificial pitches. While both cities are home to multiple professional sports teams with outdoor stadiums that hold in excess of 40,000 seats, neither city has an international standard natural turf wicket facility exclusively for cricket and it is doubtful that one would be built to be ready in time for next summer.

Currently, the only facility in the USA that is approved by the ICC for use in Twenty20 and ODI matches is the Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill, Florida. Two t20 internationals between New Zealand and West Indies in Florida in July attracted decent crowds

A Twenty20 league launched in the summer months would primarily be competing for fan and media interest inside the USA with mid-season Major League Baseball and Major League Soccer. The NHL and NBA typically finish their play-offs by the middle of June while the NFL, currently the most popular professional league in the USA, starts its regular season every September
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from espncricinfo.com

Erm, the article said "we have not spoken to KP". Monitoring basically means "keeping an eye on the news headlines just in case".

It will be interesting, there have been plenty of attempts by cricket to "crack" the US, if this one "takes" it will be good for the sport

Pete C (Kiwireddevil) wrote:

.... if this one "takes" it will be good for the sport

Pete C (Kiwireddevil) wrote:Erm, the article said "we have not spoken to KP". Monitoring basically means "keeping an eye on the news headlines just in case".

It will be interesting, there have been plenty of attempts by cricket to "crack" the US, if this one "takes" it will be good for the sport

I undertsand this is a joint venture with NZC.
what does that mean ?
Is this NZ 's attempt to own a T20 league but in a market where they expect more returns because of the limited size of home market ?

KP_fan wrote:

Pete C (Kiwireddevil) wrote:Erm, the article said "we have not spoken to KP". Monitoring basically means "keeping an eye on the news headlines just in case".

It will be interesting, there have been plenty of attempts by cricket to "crack" the US, if this one "takes" it will be good for the sport

I undertsand this is a joint venture with NZC.
what does that mean ?
Is this NZ 's attempt to own a T20 league but in a market where they expect more returns because of the limited size of home market ?

Going from memory as the joint venture has been going for a while, NZ are providing the technical cricket knowledge and the US the money. Neil Maxwell spent a couple of years in NZ in the early noughties and has good connections there for an Aussie.

Pete C (Kiwireddevil) wrote:

Going from memory ... NZ are providing the technical cricket knowledge and the US the money.

That's ok then.

Pete C (Kiwireddevil) wrote:

KP_fan wrote:

Pete C (Kiwireddevil) wrote:Erm, the article said "we have not spoken to KP". Monitoring basically means "keeping an eye on the news headlines just in case".

It will be interesting, there have been plenty of attempts by cricket to "crack" the US, if this one "takes" it will be good for the sport

I undertsand this is a joint venture with NZC.
what does that mean ?
Is this NZ 's attempt to own a T20 league but in a market where they expect more returns because of the limited size of home market ?

Going from memory as the joint venture has been going for a while, NZ are providing the technical cricket knowledge and the US the money. Neil Maxwell spent a couple of years in NZ in the early noughties and has good connections there for an Aussie.

is a big market that investors with an eye on..... did the NZ-WI games in Florida.

It will cater to Carribean and south asian populations initially to pay out the investment costs i presume.
and if it attracts the american audiences will be a huge upside.

NZC has little to lose and alot of upside potential in this arrangement........if cricket clicks in America

It will be a tiny drop in the ocean compared to MLB which draws about 80 million spectators a season.

Still, it's good to see the game being played in FL (recent Windies-NZ matches) but I can imagine US T20 will be more for the WI and south Asian expats to strut their stuff amongst work colleagues and friends.

A USA T20 is actually a good idea...

Should start with a small number of teams, maybe even as few as 4. Each team plays at least 2 Americans and at least 4 Kiwis (NZC would have a role in promoting the event). Hopefully a few players from West Indies would come across if it doesn't clash with the West Indies international season.

The effect on the England team would be non-existent. But were there a clash with the FLt20 it could damage the availability of overseas players (though I'd suggest that USA t20 would be unlikely to be more lucrative than the FL t20).

Linebreaker wrote:It will be a tiny drop in the ocean compared to MLB which draws about 80 million spectators a season.

Still, it's good to see the game being played in FL (recent Windies-NZ matches) but I can imagine US T20 will be more for the WI and south Asian expats to strut their stuff amongst work colleagues and friends.

They should target cities that don't have MLB clubs.

Its a bit of a non story at this point though isnt it. if the BBL and co cant tempt a significant number of Englandlanders to ditch their county and international contracts I cant see how one without an audience will in the short term either.
Look how many false starts there were along the slow road to a moderately successful MLS, a game with a far bigger natural audience in america and far easier for causal fans to buy into

The article also point out it starts during the Ashes, now it really is going to take some serious contracts to England and Aussie folk (KP aside) to tempt them in year one.

Looking at the US board too (I think it was Mike Selig that had a few words to say about them) there does seem to be a touch of the "used car salesman" about them, the recent history of T20 tournament financing has been "mixed" at best. Id have my suspicions about their ability to really make this happen in a big way, dodgy investment opportunities in sports are pretty commonplace these days ( wasnt some guy supposed to turn basketball into Britains number 2 sport this year?)

On a more general level though the ECB and everyone have clearly long been aware that the IPL is the tip of the iceberg, and that even if this particular league is a non starter that there is an elephant in the room about steal all their buns. T20 tournaments are better money making vehicles than county cricket (sadly), they knew this well enough to try and start the ill fated "EPL".
No doubt the toughness on the KP issue was related to this. They are laying down a marker to the players who come into the England set up that they are England players and several years commitment to build toward tournaments is required.
Sooner or later that will stop working, which will be a shame for everyone.

Going off on a tangent , why is so little international T20 played?

Erm, sorry to rain on anyone's parade but this isn't the first time the ICC has in some way tried to tap into the US market, and not the first time they have tried with a superstar T20. It has so far flopped. That doesn't mean it couldn't work this time. But the US board is in a mess, and not for the first time: not too long ago they had a rebel board (it might still exist, I haven't followed closely over the last two months, but essentially what happened was at the last elections the president took one look and the results, declared them null and void, and refused to publish them; there was then a review of the eligibility of all the regional leagues to vote in elections - much like the US pres elections the USCA board elections work on a collegiate system, and randomly several boards had their votes taken away (one league had I think 6 non compliance issues and lost their vote, whereas another had 9, including the same 6, but kept theirs...) and there was the very extreme possibility that the ICC would revoke their membership; actually scratch that, the ICC were never going to do that - "breaking" the US market is an ICC obsession.

All this to say I think success of this is fairly unlikely given precedents. The problem for the US in the past was a confused target audience (expats or non-expats? Indian or West Indian expats - cue infighting), and trying to promote cricket as an alternative to baseball, which is as silly as trying to promote it as an alternative to football (soccer) in the UK. Cricket if it is to "break" America will have to find a way to appeal to non-expat americans, and live alongside baseball. I'm not sure this T20 thing with New-Zealand is going to manage that.

Mike Selig wrote:Erm, sorry to rain on anyone's parade but this isn't the first time the ICC has in some way tried to tap into the US market, and not the first time they have tried with a superstar T20. It has so far flopped. That doesn't mean it couldn't work this time. But the US board is in a mess, and not for the first time: not too long ago they had a rebel board (it might still exist, I haven't followed closely over the last two months, but essentially what happened was at the last elections the president took one look and the results, declared them null and void, and refused to publish them; there was then a review of the eligibility of all the regional leagues to vote in elections - much like the US pres elections the USCA board elections work on a collegiate system, and randomly several boards had their votes taken away (one league had I think 6 non compliance issues and lost their vote, whereas another had 9, including the same 6, but kept theirs...) and there was the very extreme possibility that the ICC would revoke their membership; actually scratch that, the ICC were never going to do that - "breaking" the US market is an ICC obsession.

All this to say I think success of this is fairly unlikely given precedents. The problem for the US in the past was a confused target audience (expats or non-expats? Indian or West Indian expats - cue infighting), and trying to promote cricket as an alternative to baseball, which is as silly as trying to promote it as an alternative to football (soccer) in the UK. Cricket if it is to "break" America will have to find a way to appeal to non-expat americans, and live alongside baseball. I'm not sure this T20 thing with New-Zealand is going to manage that.

Very good post Mike.

As I said earlier I feel that this wouldn't be too terrible an idea (based on the NZ-WI matches), but I would add the caveat that the tournament should be very short: 1 week, 6 round robin matches and a final would do the trick.

I'm not sure that non-expat communities can ever be successfully conquered when the US population generally sees cricket as a 'long, boring game between two sides which lasts five days and usually ends in a draw', and there is already a major sport involving many of the skills associated with cricket. Certainly, any success in non-expat communities would have to build on strong interest among expats I would things - people bringing non-expat friends along etc.

If you look at the (limited) success of soccer its penetration beyond the "latino" audience has largely been down to it being ideal asa school sport. Its easily understood and can be played with minimal equipment in a short period.
T20 ticks none of those boxes. Nor is KP by any stretch a David Beckham figure.