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The world’s richest sports couple hosted a party for 400 guests in their 27-storey home in mid-October, providing Australia’s IOC member John Coates with an insight into the lucrative future cricket provides for upcoming Olympic host cities Los Angeles (2028) and Brisbane (2032) and the Olympic movement as a whole.
The party, complete with a Bollywood floor show, followed the 141st session of the IOC in Mumbai, the home city of mega-wealthy hosts Nita Ambani, the IOC member in India who owns the Mumbai Indians IPL franchise, and her husband Mukesh.
With a worth of $140 billion, the Ambanis are emblematic of the co-operational opportunities born of the new partnership between the Olympic movement and cricket, with the sport back in the Olympic temple after 128 years. It had been 40 years since India last held an IOC session.
Global Sports and Media’s Colin Smith points out that India is now the fifth-biggest economy in the world but is paying only $18 million in TV rights for next year’s Paris Olympics.
Smith says the inclusion of T20 cricket in future Games will increase the rights fees from the cricket-crazy subcontinent by 15 times to at least $270 million, which would be a massive windfall for the IOC.
“Cricket is no longer merely a Commonwealth sport,” says Smith, pointing to the sport’s inclusion in the Olympics, as well as the men’s T20 World Cup being co-hosted next year by the US.
India star Virat Kohli takes on Australia in the World Cup.Credit: Getty
There are six men’s and six women’s T20 teams scheduled for the Olympic program. The good news for Los Angeles and Brisbane is that the host countries are usually automatic qualifiers for places in team sports.
The even better news for Queensland is the opportunity to host qualifying tournaments for the six men’s and six women’s T20 teams.
With the Brisbane Games scheduled for July/August and the AFL traditionally refusing to move aside for international tournaments, other major cricket grounds outside Melbourne could be staging some lucrative matches.
Queensland premier Annastacia Palaszczuk sees this as an opportunity to spread the Games across her state. The LA Organising Committee have already declared T20 games will be held in other cities across the US.
“The specific qualifying system will be set by the international federation which, in cricket’s case, is the ICC and this will be done late in 2025 once the IOC has had a chance to review team numbers and athlete quotas in all sports,” Coates says.
“The IOC will want universality, meaning representatives from the five continents on the cricket program in 2028 and 2032 but will also want the best teams there.
“The ICC could take the six men’s and women’s places off the previous World Cup but if there are qualifying tournaments, they will certainly generate paydays for the cities which stage the matches, as well as the broadcasters.”
Smith says: “With the Indian women’s cricket competition the biggest female professional league in the world, India can be expected to be one country which would qualify for both the final six in men’s and women’s Olympic teams.
“Given 200 million people watched the [recent] men’s ODI between India and Pakistan, we could assume the ICC and IOC would want those two intense rivals in LA and Brisbane.”
The Nine Network, owners of this masthead, purchased the rights to Olympic Games’ through to 2032 before T20 cricket was added to the program, meaning the advertising revenue from the increased viewership of the new sports could be well in excess of what is earned next year in Paris.
The US host network, NBC, will also greatly benefit from the inclusion of popular sports, with baseball and softball back on the 2028 program for the LA Games. Neither sport will be age restricted – unlike the Olympic men’s soccer program, which is restricted to players aged under 23 plus three above-age athletes – meaning Major League Baseball’s stars will be centre stage in LA.
Flag football, a non-contact version of American football, will also be on the 2028 program, along with lacrosse, a popular game in North America.
The Iroquois Confederacy, a union of five Native American tribes, competed as a separate nation at this year’s World Lacrosse Championships, defeating Australia for the bronze medal.
Of the prospect of the Iroquois Confederacy competing in Los Angeles and being a vanguard for the inclusion of indigenous teams in Olympic competition, Coates says: “It is up to the US Olympic Committee to propose its representative.”
Nor will India miss the coming riches with its Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi addressing the October IOC session in Mumbai, signalling his country will bid for the 2036 Summer Games.
Coates’ term as IOC first vice president ends in Paris, but he will continue to sit on the board of the Brisbane Olympic Games and wield influence in a movement he has supported all his adult life.
“I expect India, which is a nation which respects the rule of law, will be a strong candidate for 2036,” he said, a thinly veiled reference to Middle Eastern countries that are actively hosting international sporting tournaments, despite a record of repressing individual rights and freedoms.
Before the Mumbai IOC session, the sports of surfing, skateboarding and sports climbing, which all made their debuts at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, were confirmed for Paris and LA. It can be assumed cricket, if it proves successful, will occupy a permanent place on the Olympic program.
Significantly, all the other new sports – baseball, softball, flag football, lacrosse and squash – are gender equal, with Paris being the first Games in history to provide for equivalent numbers of male and female competitors.
That could be bad news for netball’s case to be included in the Brisbane 2032 program, although Coates would not be drawn on the issue.
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