“Cricket is baseball for people with brains”, the contrarian cricket enthusiast, Piers Morgan, told viewers and listeners to the US Cricket Daily, the world’s first and only podcast dedicated to America’s Major League Cricket competition.
The tournament in its second season took place over three weeks in July this summer between six teams representing major cities in America: Los Angeles Knight Riders, MI New York, San Francisco Union, Seattle Orcas, Texas Super Kings and Washington Freedom in a Twenty20 format where each side bats and bowls for no more than 20 overs. White ball cricket. T20 is the world’s fastest growing sports format. There are now T20 franchise competitions in at least 18 countries. The MLC games are broadcast by Willow TV, an American pay television sport channel devoted to airing overseas cricket.
The Major League Cricket (MLC) attracts, like the Indian Premier League, international stars such as the Australian captain and bowler, Pat Cummins and the brilliant batters, Steve Clarke and Travis Head. All are 21st Century superstars playing in America alongside the country’s own growing number of domestic players like Aaron Jones who are becoming household names in some states.
Make no mistake, the sound of leather on willow in America has a long heritage. Historians highlight the first president of the United States, George Washington, took part in a game, Abraham Lincoln watched a match and the fact that America played, and lost, to Canada in New York in 1844, 33 years before England first played Australia. But Baseball proved more popular among the soldiers on both sides of the battlefields of the American Civil War and the nine-side-game took hold. It was easier to learn than cricket, needed less equipment and wasn’t an imported sport of a former ruling power from the past.
The future of cricket in America is exciting which is why Square Cut, the production company I cofounded on leaving Sky News with tech entrepreneur, Gideon Joseph, decided to produce a unique, daily podcast focussed on the MLC tournament available to listen on Spotify and Apple and to watch on YouTube. The appeal of the game will, I believe, grow in America over the next decade: T20 cricket is fast and furious – action packed; the matches offer excitement and razzmatazz; and cricket will feature for the first time in the next Olympic Games in 2028 that will take place in Los Angeles. Players are tempted to America, too, because of the career opportunities on offer beyond cricket.
Square Cut’s purpose with the podcast is to build a community and spark a love for cricket in a new generation of fans. We produced 23 daily shows. Each episode reviewed a match that had just finished and previewed the next day’s game. The United States Cricket Daily became the number one cricket podcast in America on the Apple charts shortly after its launch. We are grateful to the MLC organisers for letting us invade their tournament.
How did Square Cut go about it?
1. Sponsor
First we needed to find a sponsor. This was hard work. We produced several dazzling deck presentations with colourful charts but without success. It took a long while to interest anyone in a tiny, nascent tournament. In the end a cricket fan, an American publisher and author, did see the latent opportunity. Critically he was willing to put up the cash. Gregory Shaw, the founder of Clyde Hill Publishing realises the T20 is a game changer. He says, “The game of cricket is emerging as one of the most exciting sports in America because it draws on what makes the country itself so exciting — it is a melting pot of talent and ambition.” Neatly put.
2. Audience
We targeted Indian Americans, young urban Americans and British expats. Next year we need to focus harder solely on the southern Asian population in America. Follow the eyeballs. The podcast’s total impressions footprint currently stands at more than 1.3 million with 500 thousand downloads.
The listeners/ viewers were predominantly male (85%) with more than half of them aged between 35-59 years old as you would expect from traditional lovers of this sport. What was interesting was the second biggest demographic was aged between 23-27 years suggesting the new US cricket fans are younger which is good news for cricket. The geographic data indicated that our audience was predominantly based in the States with India and the U.K. a distant second and third.
3. Podcast specialist
We needed to find a specialist podcast production company capable of turning round for three weeks, overnight, non-stop, the daily podcast within a few hours of the end of each match. Demanding. Viral Tribe Entertainment came to the wicket. They pointed out podcasting is nowadays a visual medium with significant YouTube consumption. Viral’s Head of Content James Carpenter never missed a ball. He had the talent you would expect from a former producer of Radio 2’s “The Chris Evans Breakfast Show”.
Distribution was vital. We used a distribution platform called Megaphone, which takes the podcast and uploads it to the likes of Spotify. Once the first episode has been uploaded to the hosting site, this generates an RSS feed, which you submit to Spotify. Once created, you upload your episodes and schedule them to drop on the various platforms.
4. Talent
Square Cut went for expertise hiring the most well-known cricket journalist in America, Peter Della, and a young star in the broadcasting ascendant, Aaman Patel. We asked them to be fun yet analytical.
They showed their passion and knowledge interviewing players, owners, commentators and fans. Among those they talked was the Los Angeles player and wily wicketkeeper, Australian Alex Carey, who caused a rumpus in the Lord’s Long Room making front page news in the summer of 2023 when he stumped controversially an England batter in the second Ashes Test.
5. Promotion
Driving social engagement involved crafting a multi-platform strategy, by finding where your audience is most likely to live and targeting them, on platforms such as Instagram, X, TikTok, and Facebook. The idea is to share impactful content to raise awareness, grow engagement and entice people to sample your podcast. We used behind the scenes content, clips, or quotes, to encourage sharing and engagement. Collaborating with guests, other rival podcasts, and influencers was an effective way to reach new people as well as dedicating paid spend on boosting posts to a targeted group of people.
For an aging news executive this was a new world. But we built a small, successful business so we will go again next year, keen to show T20 cricket is a better watch than baseball.
