How should the BBL compete in a prosperous and crowded T20 market? | Jack Snape

TThe BBL may have been born at the dawn of the Twenty20 era, but growing pains have begun before its 15th season. Cricket Australia is looking to tap private funding to help the Australian men’s and women’s leagues keep pace in the crowded landscape of franchise cricket. But with the BBL competing against well-heeled newcomers in the sport’s increasingly volatile calendar, its true value may be difficult to gauge.

Few are better positioned to do this than Venky Harinarayan, the Indian-born Silicon Valley investor who is a leading name in San Francisco’s venture capital scene. In the sport he loves, he founded his hometown franchise, the Unicorns, in 2023 with co-owner Anand Rajaraman, and made headlines when he signed Pat Cummins to a groundbreaking four-year contract that brought Major League Cricket. [MLC] legitimacy.

Harinarayan believes the biggest challenge for the BBL in realizing its potential comes from the competitions in South Africa and the UAE, competitions that take place within the traditional school holiday period of December to January – a “very important part” of the calendar. “It requires people to think a little bit strategically,” he says. “It has to be done, but I don’t know if you can go in and ask someone to move their window. It’s not an easy process.”

The BBL was one of the first to introduce cricket’s short format after the establishment of the IPL in 2008. Although Indian internationals have always been excluded from participation, the early seasons of the Australian league attracted top-tier T20 talent and cricket stars including Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and Muttiah Muralitharan. Today’s top T20 players such as Rashid Khan, Jos Buttler, Phil Salt and Harry Brook have had BBL stints but haven’t stayed.

A recent attempt to attract more big international names has brought in the likes of Pakistan’s Babar Azam, Shaheen Afridi and Mohammad Rizwan and England’s Sam Curran, but the rise of franchise cricket in South Africa and the UAE has tested the BBL teams’ ability to sign and retain overseas talent for the entire season.

“The number of internationals [in BBL] is not close to the UAE league or even the South African league,” says Harinarayan. “The good thing about that is you build a lot of great local talent, and the not so good thing about that is the interest in the BBL itself. This tends to be more Australian and not as followed in the rest of the world.”

While the South African league is boosted by homegrown elite players, Australia’s Test stars are unavailable in the BBL due to Test scheduling overlap. The likes of Cummins, Steve Smith and Travis Head are finding room in their schedules to compete for franchises abroad, giving them an advantage over the BBL in these emerging leagues.

While the Hundred auction raised £520m, the money largely came from a core group of established cricket investors, including four IPL owners. Harinarayan believes making the BBL a compelling proposition for the likes of the Delhi Capitals or Mumbai Indians ownership groups – both of which have entities in the UAE and South African leagues – or those behind six other IPL franchises with interests in other top leagues, will help Cricket Australia find common ground on the calendar.

The Capitals and Indians also have offshoots in both the MLC and Hundred, with their seasons head-to-head in July. Harinarayan has seen IPL owners working well with other investors to develop the MLC. “Everyone realizes that it’s in everyone’s interest to grow it here. It’s not so much about sharing the pie as it is about growing the pie, and that gets people on the same page pretty quickly,” he says. “What we’ve done with the Hundred is we’ve just discovered that it doesn’t make sense for either of us [MLC and the Hundred] To also be in the same window and compete for the same players, it’s much easier if we carve out our own windows.”

The sale process in Britain has also been educational for Cricket Australia, which is currently negotiating with government agencies over what exactly a privatization would look like, and how much of the capital injection will be seen by local officials who currently run the BBL franchises and manage pathways and grassroots.

Harinarayan has a close relationship with Cricket Victoria, having helped build the Unicorns, and he traveled to Melbourne for the first time last year for the Boxing Day Test. He says it is too early to discuss his interest in a BBL franchise, but as an established property it would be a very different investment than the start-up nature of MLC. “The fact that we have such a great relationship with Cricket Victoria [means] If they go this route, should we take a look? Absolute. Shall we do it? Don’t know. I don’t know what they want, what they’re asking for, what everyone is trying to set up.”

Access to broadcast, gate and sponsorship revenues will support valuations, and Australian cricket may also have to say goodbye to existing BBL properties. Harinarayan agreed with the comments of Kolkata Knight Riders CEO Venky Mysore, who told the Sydney Morning Herald last month investors should be able to rename and rebrand teams.

“As you keep reducing what you are willing to give, obviously what you get paid also continues to decrease proportionately. If you look at the Kolkata Knight Riders or the Mumbai Indians, for example, these guys are now not IPL franchises, they are global franchises,” says Harinarayan. ‘If you [the BBL] would they be interested? Yes. If not, they will think twice, otherwise they won’t pay as much as you want, so that’s where the rubber finally comes into the market.”