54 International The EconomistOctober 5th 2019
2 2003, a marketing survey saying that peo-
ple wanted shorter matches led to the
launch in England of professional Twen-
ty20 (t20) cricket. Games last just three
hours compared with eight hours for “one-
day” cricket and as long as five days for Test
matches. t20now is the most watched ver-
sion of cricket worldwide. It appeals to a
much younger fan base, explains Mr Alavy.
Cricket’s success has been inspirational.
Rugby sevens, in which matches consist of
two halves lasting seven minutes, com-
pared with the usual 40 minutes, featured
in the Olympic games for the first time in- Three-a-side basketball, in which
games last ten minutes as opposed to 48
minutes for National Basketball Associa-
tion (nba) matches, will make its Olympic
debut next year.
Cricket’s reinvention has paid off. Mr
Matheson reckons that over the past de-
cade its revenues have grown faster than
those of any other big sport. Much of that is
thanks to India. The Indian Premier
League, the t20domestic league in India, is
by far the fastest growing major league of
any sport, says Mr Matheson. Sports can
hope to increase their revenues either by
gaining new fans or by relying on existing
fans becoming wealthier. Cricket is betting
on the latter. India will overtake China as
the most populous nation in the world
sometime in the 2020s and its middle class
is growing fast.
So central is India to cricket’s calcula-
tions that its elimination early in the 2007
cricket World Cup led to the decision to cut
the number of teams in the tournament in
future from 16 to ten, the lowest of any
comparable men’s competition. The team’s
premature exit meant that it played just
three matches that year. The restructuring
means it is guaranteed to play nine in the
group stage, a crucial factor in generating
cash from broadcasters and advertisers.
Cricket is unusual in relying so heavily
on one market for revenue growth. Most
other sports must look farther afield. To
start, they can open international tourna-
ments to new players. Since 2002 basket-
ball has doubled the number of teams in
the men’s World Cup to 32. Rugby is consid-
ering boosting its cup from 20 countries to- The rationale is simple: viewership in
countries is inevitably higher when they
compete in a world cup. “The more inclu-
sive you make sports, the wider the market
is going to be,” says Dave Berri, a sports
economist from Southern Utah University.
Football is, once again, the world leader in
this regard. It recently expanded its World
Cup to allow 48 teams to compete. The next
women’s cup will include 32 countries,
compared with 24 in the most recent one.
Game on
Holding such competitions in new mar-
kets also helps. Rugby has been cautious,
but after taking the 2019 World Cup to Ja-
pan—the first time the event has been
staged outside the sport’s traditional
strongholds—it now intends to hold either
the 2027 or 2031 tournament in America. “It
would certainly accelerate some possibili-
ties in that part of the world, which would
be good for everyone because the revenue
would go back into the game,” Brett Gosper,
World Rugby’s boss, recently mused. Bas-
ketball’s next World Cup will be held in Ja-
pan, Indonesia and the Philippines.
Sports can venture abroad even without
a world cup. The major American leagues
in American football, baseball and basket-
ball are all playing regular season matches
in London in 2019. They are already attract-
ing crowds beyond homesick Americans.
The National Football League says that it
sold tickets to one game played in London
to every neighbourhood in Britain.
Such efforts can go alongside squeezed
sports’ third gambit—spotting star players
in the markets they are eyeing up. These
athletes are a powerful recruitment tool,
keeping new fans watching. The success of
basketball in China—which hosted this
year’s World Cup—is a slam-dunk example.
Basketball’s achievements in China are
partly down to one man. In 2002 Yao Ming
became the first Chinese player to be the
top pick in the nbadraft. That marked thestart of a brilliant career in America. Find-
ing a star always involves luck. But the nba
improved its chances through its grass-
roots work in China. It established offices
there as far back as 1992. It has played exhi-
bition games in China since 2004, long be-
fore any other professional American
sports league.
The nba has capitalised on Mr Yao’s
popularity and used it to expand basket-
ball’s reach still further. It now has three
academies in China, as well as others in
Australia, Mexico, India and Senegal. In the
past, the league has been “more passive in
terms of the development of that next gen-
eration of international players,” said
Adam Silver, the head of the nba, last year.
He reckons that if the organisation can
nurture outstanding players in such mar-
kets, it will increase interest in basketball
hugely. The Basketball Africa League,
which includes teams from nine African
countries, will launch next year as a col-
laboration between the nbaand fiba, the
global governing body for basketball.
Such investment helps explain why
basketball players in America have become
a markedly more international bunch. In
1980 the league had only four foreign play-
ers, from just four countries beyond Amer-
ica. By 2000 the league had 36 non-Ameri-
can players, from 24 different countries. It
now boasts 108, representing 42 national-
ities. The figure remains well short of Pre-
mier League football in Britain, whose
players hailed from 64 countries last year.
But it comfortably outstrips similar
leagues in other sports.
Yet perhaps the biggest lesson of all
from the nba’s success is the extent to
which playing a sport makes people watch
it. According to its research, the nbareck-
ons that in newer territories, people who
participate in a particular sport are 68
times more likely to be committed fans.
There are now 600,000 basketball courts in
China, giving players plenty of places to
dream of becoming the next Mr Yao.
Increasing audiences in new markets
requires commitment, time and money,
says Mr Alavy. Sports that put on one-off
matches and hope to gain devoted follow-
ers as a result will probably be disappoint-
ed. In 2015 a set of t20matches between
teams captained by Sachin Tendulkar and
Shane Warne, two cricket legends, were
staged in America. The organisers claimed
these would spark interest in cricket there.
In fact, once the tickets had sold, little seri-
ous investment went into developing
American interest in the sport.
Basketball has done better than its com-
petitors at heeding the lessons of football’s
success. pwcreckons that among the big
sports other than football, basketball will
see the greatest increase in revenues in the
coming years. The world seems to have set-
tled on its second-favourite sport. 7
*2018 †2019Games without frontiersSources:VictorMatheson;league websites; pro-football-reference.com;quanthockey.com;transfermarkt.comGlobal revenue
2018, $bnNumber of nationalities of players
On first-team squads,2018-19season
0 1020304050
Football
American football
Baseball
Basketball
Ice hockey
Cricket
Rugby union020 10 30 40 50 60 70
Football (EPL)
Basketball (NBA)
Rugby union
(English Premiership)
Baseball (MLB)*
American football
(NFL)
Ice hockey (NHL)
Cricket (IPL)†