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With more than two billion fans, cricket is, by some metrics, the second-largest sport in the world.
The recently completed men’s Twenty20 (T20) World Cup final set multiple viewership records, including a peak global concurrent streaming audience of 72 million accumulated for India’s win over New Zealand. And, last November, the 2025 Women’s Cricket World Cup delivered 1.5 billion global viewing hours – three times more than the previous edition.
As the game’s global governing body, the International Cricket Council (ICC) remains in a healthy financial position, earning US$756.3 million in revenue in 2025 and declaring a net surplus of US$543.3 million.
Commercial earnings were boosted by more than US$110 million in new sponsorship deals with the likes of Hyundai, Anheuser-Busch InBev (AB InBev) and Google – putting it US$30 million ahead of its target for the ongoing four-year cycle.
But, despite these successes, ICC chief executive Sanjog Gupta believes the sport has yet to maximise its commercial potential given its highly engaged fanbase.
Gupta (pictured left) believes cricket needs to diversify its revenue streams to maximise its commercial potential (Image credit: SportsPro)
Identifying new revenue streams
At SportsPro London, Gupta outlined three opportunities which he feels are under-monetised in cricket.
The first is matchday revenue. Although some countries, such as India and Australia, can sell out matches on a regular basis, other nations have been unable to maximise revenues from ticketing, hospitality, or catering.
Data commercialisation is another area Gupta feels has been neglected. He argued that collecting information on just ten per cent of the sport’s total fanbase would unlock new sponsorship and marketing revenue streams through more targeted campaigns and activations.
Gaming is another blind spot, with officially-licensed simulations of the sport few and far between in recent years. Gupta lamented that there were not many touchpoints for fans to further engage with the sport other than watching live matches.
This thinking has led to the ICC running a tender for its official gaming rights, with the Economic Times reporting last month that several companies like Electronic Arts (EA Sports), Reliance Jio, Big Ant Studios and Dream Cricket were among the bidders.
“Some of these revenue streams are still in in their exploratory stage and will be only unlocked once cricket’s structures evolve with developments in the world of technology and what they enable in terms of consumption,” Gupta said. “They [the revenue streams] will come to bear only in the next three to five years.”
Reducing media rights reliance
The ICC’s strategy to diversify its revenue streams comes in the face of declining media rights revenues experienced across the sports industry.
This push to diversify revenue streams comes at a time when media rights values are plateauing or contracting across the industry.
Traditionally, many cricket boards rely on broadcast income from bilateral series. Higher-profile contests have proven to be a money-spinner for federations, with events like The Ashes between England and Australia and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy, contested by India and Australia, hugely popular among fans.
Media rights also make up a significant proportion of the ICC’s income, particularly the US$3 billion deal for international tournaments it has with JioStar in India. However, in December, the federation denied reports the broadcaster wanted to terminate its contract due to reported financial concerns.
Gupta, who joined the ICC from JioStar last year, noted the consumption and technological shifts taking place in the wider media ecosystem, such as streaming, creator distribution and AI-mediated discovery. He said cricket would need to evolve its commercial model to monetise the sport’s high level of engagement.
“Cricket is a deeply under-leveraged sport as far as its commercial value is concerned, and that is largely on account of how dependent or how focussed it has been on the growth of media rights revenues,” he said.
“On one side, we have this massive opportunity where the sport clearly derives a significant share of its revenue or commercial value from media rights and is potentially under-commercialised on many other streams of revenue.
“And on the other hand, you also have significant shifts in the sports economy itself, which will force a recalibration of how those revenues are distributed and which products garner a higher share of that revenue. So I think media rights revenue will see structural shifts going forward.”
Driving accessibility and audience
The transformation of cricket’s commercial model is an undertaking the ICC and Gupta are keen to take as part of a wider shift to assume a hands-on role in driving the sport’s growth. The ICC wants to be seen as more than just an events organiser, with Gupta believing major events should have a direct impact on the sport’s development, leaving a cultural impact on the host country, inspiring member nations, and drawing in non-cricket fans.
At the recent men’s T20 World Cup, the ICC sought to drive accessibility through dynamic ticket pricing, live match broadcasts in 25 languages, and content creator programmes designed to reach reach people typically uninterested in the sport.
“There isn’t one fan that we are trying to cater to, and I think that’s the complex opportunity for cricket,” Gupta said. “You have event seekers, whose attention is typically oriented towards events of significance – they engage and they leave.
“Then there are the cricket connoisseurs. They are the ones who watch a certain number of hours of live cricket every year and follow the sport deeply. Across that spectrum then lies various fan cohorts that need to be served differently, and each have very different modes of engaging with the sport.
“The opportunity to grow fandom starts with making the game as accessible as possible.”
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