This is the fourth 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 and part three and get more from Eddie on his Substack and connect with him on LinkedIn.

How cricket's core design flaw is alienating fans and burning out players

In this series, we've explored cricket’s meaning problem, its chaotic calendar, and where smart money is hiding. Now, we reveal the single design flaw that underpins them all.

The context: product vs platform

I’ve spent the past eight years working in sports tech (including cricket tech), where the tension between product and platform comes up every day.

In simple terms: a product is designed for people on the outside — clear, intuitive, easy to love.

A platform is built for those already inside — adaptable, connected, and compounding.

Most great companies become both. But sequence matters.

Build the platform first, and it is difficult for outsiders to enter. Build the product first, and everyone can.

In many ways, cricket has built the wrong one first.

This time the story is about two people we met in Article 1, and that the sport is failing in opposite ways:

Alicia, the new fan who can’t find her way in.

Raj, the professional player who can’t find his way back out.

Their stories reveal a deeper mistake. Cricket has confused “product” and “platform,” and used the wrong mindset for the wrong audience.

Meet Alicia

Nineteen. TikTok native. She fell in love with cricket not because her dad passed it down, but because an algorithm delivered her a six that made her heart skip. She bought some merch. Picked a team. Argued online. She was seduced by the product.

Then came the blur. Leagues piling on leagues. Her favourite players in different shirts every month. Nothing stuck. She didn’t break up with cricket. It just drifted away.

I was reminded of Alicia last weekend, bowling to my six-year-old son in the backyard. I sent down a little off-break, it hit his leg, and I shouted “LBW!”

He froze. “What’s LBW?”

For me, it was instinct. For him, it was nonsense. Three letters standing between curiosity and confusion.

And that confusion isn't just a fleeting moment; it's a massive, long-term economic risk. New data from Genius Sports found that fans who start following a sport before age 14 spend 88 percent more over their lifetime than those who discover it later. Every time the sport fails to explain an "insider code" to a child, it’s not just losing a viewer for the day; it’s potentially forfeiting a high-value fan for life.

And that’s the point: cricket is full of these insider codes. Unless someone explains them, a new fan never gets past the first screen.

Alicia ran into those codes on TikTok. My son ran into them in the backyard. In commentary, acronyms pile up; DRS, NRR, Duckworth-Lewis-Stern. In scheduling, formats collide without explanation - why are these teams playing?

What’s obvious to insiders is invisible to outsiders. Without a clear product layer to decode the game, new fans never make it past the surface.

Meet Raj

Twenty-four. Strong wrists. Steady hands. He grew up dreaming of a Test cap. Instead, he got short franchise contracts. New kit monthly. Big cheques. Heroes he once idolised now shaking his hand in the dressing room.

On paper, he made it. In reality, he’s exhausted. Flights. Hotels. Nets. Matches. New league. New city. Repeat.

His body aches. His technique slips. He misses weddings, downtime, and the joy that first made him play.

In reality, fast bowlers from Australia and England routinely break down. Top batters skip Tests to chase short tournaments. The calendar has become a meat grinder, and every injury or withdrawal dilutes the product.

Raj’s exhaustion isn’t an isolated story; it’s a warning signal that the sport is burning its most valuable asset: its talent.

Alicia drifts because she never finds a way in.

Raj burns out because he never finds a way back.

Both are signals of the same problem.

The product opportunity

This is the opportunity. There are millions of potential fans like Alicia and my son; curious, but lost at the first acronym. Women in the Gulf. A kid in rural America. Teens in Lagos who’ve only ever seen cricket through a highlight reel.

Platforms earn the right to expand by being mission-critical. Cricket hasn’t earned that right with new fans yet.

The product job is simple: raise day-30 retention from “nice clip” to “where do I watch next week?”

Cricket doesn’t necessarily need to win back old fans. It needs to open the door wider for new ones. To do that, it must be designed like a product: clear onboarding, simple rules, guided journeys.

Spotify’s Discover Weekly doesn’t dump the entire music catalogue on you; it guides you to your next favourite track. Netflix doesn’t quiz you on Scorsese; it notices your taste and serves the next show you’ll love.

Despite its scale, sport remains one of the least personalised corners of entertainment. Only about 30 percent of sports companies use technology for targeted marketing, compared with 92 percent in retail. The gap isn’t cultural; it’s commercial. Every missed personalisation is a missed conversion.

The numbers back it up. Morgan Stanley projects global sports revenues could rise by roughly 25 percent (about $130 billion) if leagues close the digital gap and treat fans the way Netflix or Spotify treat users. Gen Z and millennials say they’ll spend more on sport, but only if it feels tailored to them.

Formula 1, Morgan Stanley notes, leaned on AI-driven personalisation during broadcasts and saw a 40 percent jump in digital views across its own platforms.

Going one step further and you can see that the demand for this is already there. A recent report from Infront Sports reveals that 70 percent of fans are happy to share personal data in exchange for tailored offers or better experiences. The audience is not the barrier; they are explicitly asking for the kind of personalization that other industries have mastered. Every missed personalisation is a missed conversion and a failure to meet stated fan demand

The message is clear: when fans feel seen, they stay. When they don’t, they scroll.

The best companies start with a product. Only later do they become platforms.

Cricket has done the reverse. It acts like a platform – broadcasts everywhere, leagues in every timezone – without ever building the product layer that makes it usable, lovable, and repeatable.

Right now, cricket is like a streaming app with no homepage, no recommendations, and no idea who’s watching.

Alicia didn’t drift because she lost interest. She drifted because nothing was built to help her stay.

A true product is more than a slick app or homepage carousel. It spans everything: onboarding, scheduling, storytelling, coaching, commerce, even how rules are explained.

Until cricket builds this product layer, millions of potential fans will keep bouncing off the surface.

The platform opportunity

But the story doesn’t end there. Because for Raj, and the millions already inside the game, the challenge is different.

Cricket doesn’t treat them like participants in a platform. It treats them like a product: one more match to sell, one more series to churn out, one more contract to burn through.

That mindset is outdated. What insiders like Raj (and people like me!) need is a platform.

Market leadership in cricket isn’t a trophy; it’s calendar discipline.

A weekly anchor slot is how you earn back your customer acquisition cost (CAC), the marketing spend and attention it takes to win a fan in the first place.

Every predictable touchpoint lowers that cost and compounds the return.

For existing fans, a platform could mean personalised feeds, smarter scheduling, and tools that make them feel part of the ecosystem, not just consumers of it.

For players like Raj, it could mean connected performance data, integrated health support, and contract systems that reward loyalty and wellbeing.

A platform learns you. A platform adapts to you. A platform amplifies you.

It doesn’t flood you with games; it connects your whole journey.

Designing Alicia’s way back in

So, what if cricket acted like a product for Alicia?

She’s at the Toronto Blue Jays Cricket Day. Cricket demos outside the stadium. A player throws the ceremonial first pitch. It clicks.

Midway through the 7th inning, scrolling with her dad, she dives into a cricket clip. This time, something different happens.

Her app notices. It asks: what did you love? The sound. The celebration. The slow-mo.

She clicks “celebration.”

Next comes a story about that cricketer. A quick quiz on the basics. A Discord link for beginners. A challenge: film your own celebration.

Now she isn’t just watching cricket. She’s in it.

Every new “module” Alicia adopts, like rules primers, team follows, creator feeds, lifts lifetime value (LTV), the measure of how long and deeply a fan stays connected to the sport.

Cricket’s net revenue retention (NRR) isn’t about adding more matches; it’s about connecting more pathways, that is, the number of products, experiences, or communities a fan adopts over time.

Designing Raj’s way back home

Now picture Raj in a platform-first world.

Instead of being sold from league to league, he has a coherent calendar (see Article 2) that gives him breathing space.

Instead of siloed data, he has a performance spine that tracks his growth, protects his health, and builds his identity.

Instead of feeling disposable, he becomes part of a sustainable ecosystem.

A Raj-centred platform would support his career, not just rent it. It would link contracts to wellbeing, connect formats through data, and make his loyalty worth something again.

From passive to active

When I was a kid, I copied David Boon and Mark Waugh shots in my backyard.

Imagine if I’d filmed them and an app told me: “You’re 78 percent Mark Waugh. Here’s how to train like him.”

That’s not just analysis. That’s belonging.

The tech is already here: motion capture, swing analysis, AI coaching. (We’ll cover this in detail in Article 5.)

Some fans will fall for Tests. Others will follow a player across five leagues. Both count.

The job isn’t to force conformity. It’s to design pathways that feel personal.

The path to growth

The tools are already here: ICC datasets, team pipelines, fan creators, sports-tech builders.

What’s missing is intent.

Across the industry, the gap between intent and execution is worth billions.

Too many still treat personalisation as a luxury when, in reality, it’s the single largest unlocked revenue lever in sport.

The paradox is that cricket has the opposite problem to most sports. It doesn’t suffer from scarcity; it suffers from saturation. Matches spill into one another, formats overlap, and fans lose track of what matters.

Personalisation isn’t about adding more games – it’s about helping fans navigate the ones that already exist. Turning abundance into clarity. Turning noise into narrative.

For Alicia and new fans: cricket needs a product mindset – guided onboarding, context-rich simplicity, a path from first clip to true belonging.

For Raj and existing fans: cricket needs a platform mindset – data-driven tools, personalised experiences, and communities that extend lifetime value and protect the players who drive it.

Call it a platform if you want; the proof is in ARPU (average revenue per user), retention, and player availability, not the press release.

Investor’s note: The metrics that matter

For investors, this isn’t speculation. Analysts estimate that personalising fan journeys could expand sports’ annual revenue pool by roughly a quarter.

The same data points you’d use in consumer tech — retention, LTV, conversion — now map directly onto sport.

Behind that growth projection are three structural tailwinds investors should notice:

(1) Institutional capital is pouring in. Private equity, sovereign wealth, and family offices are underwriting the next wave of digital transformation.

(2) Demographics are shifting. Under-35s spend more if the experience is digital-first.

(3) Distribution is expanding. Tech giants buying rights are turning regional games into global brands.

Cricket sits at the intersection of all three, but hasn’t yet built the digital rails to capture the upside.

For fans, the story is Alicia and Raj.

For investors, the same story shows up in the numbers.

Product-first metrics: how many new fans watch a second match within 30 days; how many complete a simple rules primer; how many pick a team and stick.

Platform-first metrics: how long existing fans stay engaged; how many modules (teams, leagues, fantasy, creators) they adopt; how much player availability is protected.

Call it product or platform if you want, but the proof is in retention, engagement, and talent health.
That’s what turns noise into growth, and growth into compounding returns.

The verdict

Cricket doesn’t need louder hype or more matches. It needs order.

Right now the sport is built like a platform for insiders and sold like a product to outsiders, so Alicia never gets past the first screen and Raj never finds a way back. That’s sequencing failure.

The fix is simple, not easy:

Product first for new fans. Clear rules, guided journeys, and personalised entry points that turn a single clip into a second match into a weekly habit.

Platform next for insiders. Calendar discipline as strategy; a weekly anchor slot that pays back CAC, plus a performance and health data spine that protects player availability and extends careers.

Judge success by the numbers that compound: retention, ARPU, LTV, NRR, and player availability — not by how many press releases or pop-up leagues can be squeezed into a calendar.

Cricket doesn’t have a demand problem. It has a sequencing problem.

If it gets that sequence right, Alicia belongs, Raj endures, and the sport compounds.

That’s not just good for fans. This is the investable edge.

This is the fourth in a series exploring cricket’s future.

In our next piece, we’ll go deeper into the Cricket Tech Stack by showcasing some of the builders shaping the sport’s digital DNA.