This is the tenth in a series exploring the future of cricket by Eddie Fitzgibbon, a Wisden board member and strategic advisor specialising in cricket with a focus on the USA market and sports technology. Read part one, part two, part three, part four, part five, part six, part seven, part eight and part nine and get more from Eddie on his Substack and connect with him on LinkedIn.

Cricket has never lacked passion. It has never lacked history. And it has never lacked iconic venues. What it has lacked, quietly and for a very long time, is an economic model for the spaces those venues occupy.

In Article 9, we diagnosed cricket’s structural fragility: a sport propped up by a “tentpole economy” of ICC distributions and marquee series. That model worked while rights fees only moved in one direction. It becomes far less comforting once you accept that those rights are no longer guaranteed to grow forever.

So the natural next question is not about formats, schedules, or governance. It is more physical than that.

Where does the next layer of durable capital actually sit?

The answer, hiding in plain sight, is the stadium.

The quiet problem no one likes talking about

Cricket stadiums are some of the most emotionally valuable assets in sport. They sit on prime land in the world’s most dense cities: St John’s Wood in London, Churchgate in Mumbai, Richmond in Melbourne. They are woven into national identity.

They are also, as businesses, astonishingly inefficient.

Let’s look at the numbers:

Lord’s (England): The Home of Cricket is a bustling club, yet for ‘Major Revenue Generating Events’ (Tests, ODIs, The Hundred), it typically sees peak utilisation for only 15 to 20 days per year.

Eden Gardens (India): Outside of seven IPL home games and perhaps one or two international fixtures, 66,000 seats sit largely empty. That is a peak asset utilisation of less than 5 per cent.

For the other 340-plus days, these venues are ‘Lazy Assets’.

They require security, maintenance, staffing, utilities, and CapEx upkeep but produce very little in return.

Note: There are exceptions. In Australia, multi-sport oval dynamics create high utilisation where the MCG hosted four million fans over 69 major event days in 2024. But for the vast majority of the cricket world, this is a legacy design problem. Cricket built cathedrals purely for events.

The modern economy rewards places that work every day. And that gap, between emotional importance and economic output, is where the opportunity lives.

The heist: Why we should look to steal from the US and Europe (again)

This isn’t a uniquely cricketing problem. American and European sports lived with it for decades, too. The shift came when they stopped thinking of stadiums as destinations and started treating them as anchors.

In the new model, the match is not the product. It is the magnet.

The real business sits around it: hotels, offices, retail, hospitality, medical services, public amenities. The stadium becomes one tenant inside a much larger Sports-Anchored Mixed-Use District (SMD) that operates morning to night, 365 days a year.

The Prototype: The Battery Atlanta

Home of MLB’s Atlanta Braves, this is the proof of concept. They didn’t just build a ballpark; they built a 2-million-square-foot community. In Q3 2024, their mixed-use revenue hit $17 million, completely independent of baseball ticket sales. They proved that while the game brings the people, the district captures the wallet.

The Future: The Kansas City Chiefs’ $4 Billion Pivot

If The Battery was the prototype, the Kansas City Chiefs have just provided the confirmation. In December 2025, the Chiefs made the decision to leave Arrowhead Stadium, one of the most atmospheric, historic venues in the NFL.

Why? Because atmosphere doesn’t pay the bills on a Tuesday.

Arrowhead is the cricket stadium problem personified: a legendary concrete bowl surrounded by a sea of parking lots, geographically isolated and active only 10 days a year. By moving across state lines, the Chiefs are anchoring a $4 billion masterplan.

• The structure: A 65,000-seat stadium embedded in a district of hotels, retail, and office space.
• The logic: Trading game-day economics (ticket sales) for real estate economics (steady, bond-like yield).
• The valuation: Institutional capital loves this structure because it converts a volatile sports team into a stable infrastructure asset.

The lesson for cricket is brutal but clear: History is not a business model. If the Chiefs can walk away from 50 years of history because the asset was too ‘lazy’, cricket boards need to stop letting nostalgia dictate their balance sheets.

The frontier: Real Madrid’s innovation engine

If the Braves built a mall and the Chiefs are building a financial fortress, Real Madrid is building a brain.

In late 2024, the club approved the Madrid Innovation District (MID). This moves the goalposts entirely. They aren’t just looking for footfall; they are looking for IP. They are converting 85 hectares of their training complex into a €1.3 billion ecosystem for AI, biotech, and sports science.

• The shift: From sports club to ‘Innovation Landlord’.
• The tenant mix: Instead of burger chains, they are leasing space to corporate R&D labs, university training hubs, and startup incubators.
• The lesson: Winning on the pitch is volatile; the business of performance is permanent.

For cricket, the most data-heavy sport on earth, this is the glaring open goal. Why are our stadiums just venues for matches? Why aren’t they the global R&D HQs for ball-tracking, biomechanics, and officiating AI?

Modern Magnificenza and the return of the Town Square

There is a second shift sitting underneath the obvious real-estate one.

We are moving into a world that is increasingly disembodied. As AI automates our work and algorithms curate our reality, we are in danger of losing the commons, the shared spaces where we congregate as people, not data points.

For too long, sport and venues have been run on spreadsheet logic: Optimise yield. Reduce friction. But that logic has left us with sterile stadiums that feel efficient but empty.

We need to return to the logic of the Town Square.

Packy McCormick describes this as “Modern Magnificenza”, the pursuit of greatness and shared physical experience in an age of cheap digital abundance. In a world of infinite content, community is the only moat.

This is where the cricket district becomes more than a revenue play. It becomes the civic centre. It is a place built for the 300 days when there isn’t a match. It is where Alicia (our fan from Article 1) comes to co-work, where kids learn to bowl on smart-lanes, and where the neighbourhood gathers to eat.

In an AI future, the stadium needs to be the one place that algorithms cannot replicate.

The investor thesis: OpCo vs. PropCo

For the sophisticated investor, this is the arbitrage opportunity.

In traditional cricket thinking, everything lives inside one messy entity: the team, the ground, the ticketing, the maintenance. Wins and losses bleed directly into the balance sheet.

In the modern model, that bundle gets separated:

1. OpCo (Operating Company): Holds the sporting risk. The team, broadcast rights, sponsorship. It is high-beta, volatile, and ego-driven.
2. PropCo (Property Company): Holds the stability. The land, the buildings, the hotel leases, the recurring yield. It is stable, asset-backed, and inflation-hedged.
3. The Tech Multiplier: This structure also justifies the heavy upfront cost of modernising. Why spend millions on 5G and AI infrastructure? Because of digital and physical convergence. Data shows that smart venues drive a 27 percent increase in per-capita spend through real-time analytics and frictionless payments.

Once you see that distinction, you realise cricket has been leaving institutional capital on the table for decades. You don’t need to care if the team wins the league; you only need to care that the hotel has 80 percent occupancy.

Alicia doesn’t just “go to cricket” anymore

This is where Alicia re-enters the story. Earlier in the series, she was the fan cricket struggled to keep. Busy, digitally fluent, distracted.

In a reimagined cricket precinct, Alicia’s relationship with the game stops being episodic.

• 07:00: Coffee at the stadium café.
• 08:30: Gym session under the stands.
• 10:00: Co-working space overlooking the outfield.
• 15:00: Kids at cricket-themed daycare on site.
• 18:30: A drink and a bite with her friends and their families.

She doesn’t think of this as ‘engaging with cricket’. It’s just part of her daily geography. That’s the shift from Event Economics to Habit Economics.

Rays of hope: Glimpses of the future

Cricket is not yet at the level of The Battery or the Bernabéu. The gap between the fully mature real estate engines of US and some European sport and the average cricket ground remains vast. Much work remains to fully capture the 365-day value we see in those markets.

But the shift has undeniably begun. The mindset is moving from ‘stadium management’ to ‘precinct curation’. We are seeing the first key pieces falling into place and proof that this isn’t just theory, but an executable reality. Here are some examples of current and future application of this future:

The UK: The working model

At Emirates Old Trafford in Manchester, we see the closest thing to a finished product. A Hilton Garden Inn is built directly into the stadium structure, but the real engine is The Point, a 1,000-seat conference facility. In 2023, non-match day revenue overtook international match revenue. Edgbaston in Birmingham is taking it further by integrating an NHS walk-in center. The stadium is becoming civic infrastructure, making the revenue recession-proof regardless of the team’s form.

India: The value gap

The Narendra Modi Stadium in Ahmedabad proves the value exists, even if cricket hasn’t fully captured it yet. It serves as the anchor for a 236-acre Olympic-bid masterplan, and property appreciation around the venue has outpaced surrounding areas by 40-50 percent.

Historically, private developers captured this upside. The next phase of IPL valuation will arrive when franchises and state associations finally control the real estate footprint their brand energises.

Pakistan: The speed of execution

In preparation for the Champions Trophy 2025, the PCB offered a flash of what is possible at the Gaddafi Stadium in Lahore. They looked at local culture. In Lahore, the Food Street is the heartbeat of the city. Under chairman Mohsin Naqvi, the stadium was reintegrated into the city’s dining rhythm in 117 days. It proved that when the will exists, the ‘Third Column’ of infrastructure can be built at speed.

Australia: The tale of three cities

Australia has the volume (as noted, the MCG hosted four million fans in 2024 across Cricket and AFL) but it still faces leakage. The Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) sits adjacent to the Entertainment Quarter, yet they function as separate entities due to disconnected ownership; fans leave the match, and the economic energy dies. Contrast this with the Adelaide Oval Hotel, the first integrated stadium hotel in the country. During major events, precinct occupancy hits 95 percent.

This structural divergence is unique to cricket. Australia’s major grounds blend public ownership with bespoke management rights, ranging from the private hegemony of the Melbourne Cricket Club at the MCG to a commercial profit-sharing joint venture at the Adelaide Oval. This creates a complex landscape where the financial destiny of the sport is tied to three distinct operators: a private members’ club, a centralised government agency, and the sporting bodies themselves.

South Africa: The lifestyle ppportunity

In South Africa, the model is security and lifestyle. The Wanderers in Johannesburg sits on the edge of Sandton – some of the most valuable commercial real estate on the continent – yet historically acted as a closed fortress. The opportunity is to turn the precinct into a secure, high-end ‘Live-Work-Play’ village. They have already laid the digital rails (becoming the country’s first 5G smart stadium), but the real arbitrage is physical. By integrating office parks and retail into the stadium’s outer ring, the cricket board can trade volatile ticket sales for steady, premium commercial rent in a city where safe, managed environments command the highest premiums.

The West Indies: The latent potential

The Caribbean possesses a distinct advantage that remains largely untapped: the Cruise Ship Economy. Kensington Oval in Barbados is a cathedral of cricket, yet it sits largely disconnected from the thousands of tourists docking in Bridgetown every week.

The stadium needs to function less like a sporadic sports venue and more like a permanent cultural resort anchor. By building a museum, a 365-day high-end restaurant, and a cricket experience for intrigued Americans and other cricket loving tourists, the venue becomes a must-visit shore excursion, monetising the brand history every time a ship docks, not just when a ball is bowled.

Raj and the hidden incentive

While Alicia’s relationship deepens horizontally, for Raj (our theoretical player), it changes vertically.
When Raj chooses where to play, facilities matter. Recovery centres, biomechanics labs, and medical infrastructure cost money that broadcast revenue rarely funds sustainably.

This is where PropCo quietly shapes OpCo outcomes.

• The yield: The 6-8 percent rental yield from the precinct funds the new hydrotherapy centre, the AI-driven bowling machines, and the best-in-class outfield.
• The incentive: Raj notices. The best environments attract the best talent and not just because they pay the most, but because they extend careers.
• The pipeline: But it’s not just about the current pro; it’s also about the next one. When a cricket-themed day-care centre or an academy sits inside the same precinct as the main ground, the kid in the stands can watch a cover drive, walk 200 meters, and practice it in the same facility. The proximity bridges the gap between aspiration and reality. “If you can see it, you can be it.” By collapsing the distance between the hero and the dreamer, you don’t just upgrade the real estate; you upgrade the talent pool.

The once-in-a-generation arbitrage

When you step back, the opportunity is clear. Cricket owns or controls some of the most emotionally powerful real estate in global sport. For decades, it has monetised only a thin slice of that value.

This is not about turning cricket into real estate. It’s about recognising that the land beneath the game can fund the game’s future.

For long-term capital, that distinction matters. You don’t need to rely on lumpy revenues from marquee series or think about the upcoming media rights cycle and if you will get your budgets for ICC distribution. What you need is confidence that people will still drink coffee, attend conferences, and book hotel rooms ten years from now.

That’s the kind of asset institutions understand. And it’s the kind cricket has been sitting on all along.

Next up:

Mature markets are about retrofitting legacy assets. But growth markets are doing something else entirely. Nations like the USA, Nepal, and Uganda aren’t constrained by ‘cathedrals’. They’re designing community anchors from scratch and often at a fraction of the cost, with far more upside.

That’s a totally different game. And it’s where we go next.