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

In the last two chapters, we mapped cricket’s technological awakening.

First, we examined the ‘Cricket Tech Stack’ - a bottom-up wave of startups building coaching sensors, simulation tools, smart stumps, and AI-driven highlights. Then, we planned ‘The Great Cricket Heist’ - the argument that cricket doesn’t need to invent the wheel, it needs to ‘steal’ the proven innovation playbooks from the NFL, NBA, EPL, and PGA.

But a toolkit isn't a strategy. All this innovation leaves one question hanging in the air.

Cool, now what?

This piece builds on the thinking of Packy McCormick’s Means and Meaning and Michael Broughton’s Separation of Church and State and the hard-won infrastructure lessons from Sports Tech Services. Reading these helped crystallize, for me, the one question that is central to cricket’s future:

If the sport has found its means, how do we then turn that into meaning?

The afterglow of innovation

Innovation is seductive. It gives us the illusion of motion.

We’ve begun to build sensors that see every swing, cameras that think for themselves, and algorithms that can tell a story before the broadcaster does.

But none of it will change the sport if the systems above it remain frozen. Technology in a vacuum is just a gimmick.

Cricket’s challenge isn’t the absence of technology, it is really the absence of a design or architecture to absorb it.

We’ve built the means. Now we need to build the playbook for the meaning.

Technology can amplify greatness, but it can’t define it. Governance, capital, and imagination must do that. Without the architecture to absorb innovation, cricket will end up with the world’s smartest gadgets sitting inside the world’s slowest structure.

So, I thought about how to frame this and then came up with the hypothetical - what if I were dropped into an existing cricket board, or a new emerging-market league, tomorrow? Here’s how I’d build from first principles:

If I ran the board

1. Start with a diagnostic, not a roadmap.

The first step is a simple audit. You’d map three layers:

• Tech maturity: What’s already digitized and what’s still manual.
• Fan friction: Where the experience breaks e.g. ticketing, content, community.
• Data ownership: Who actually owns the value created by the sport’s cameras, wearables, and fans.

Every board should have a single dashboard that tracks these three. And as the team at Sports Tech Services warns: do not hire a consultancy to write a 150-page roadmap. Hire builders to lay the pipes. That’s the baseline.

2. Separate church and state.

The commercial and innovation arm must sit outside the day-to-day sporting machine. This shouldn't be a department; it should be a subsidiary with autonomy: its own P&L, governance board, and the right to fail.

Michael Broughton called this the separation of church and state: let the sporting side preserve history, and the commercial side build the future.

Cricket’s federations could borrow from the NFL, where NFL Films, Next Gen Stats, and NFL Ventures operate as semi-independent businesses. They monetize data, storytelling, and tech integration beyond the game itself.

Governance for trust. Entrepreneurs for speed.

3. Build incentive layers.

If your executive bonuses are still pegged only to match-day attendance or sponsorship renewals, you’re measuring yesterday. Future boards should reward:

• Growth in fan data acquisition and retention.
• Youth participation via tech platforms.
• Uptake of domestic innovation (pilots moved to production).

One of my favourite quotes is from the late Charlie Munger (Warren Buffett’s offsider) who said: “Show me the incentive, and I’ll show you the outcome.”

4. Codify open systems.

Every board should create a secure 'digital doorway' (an API). This is simply a controlled way for approved developers to 'plug in' and use the sport's data to build new apps, better ticketing systems, and other fan experiences.

The goal is agnostic infrastructure. Think Cricket SDK (which means giving creators an official toolbox to build with) not a ‘sponsor-forced’ closed loop where you are stuck with a complex tool just because a partner wrote a check.

5. Publish a National Innovation Charter.

It should define who owns what, who invests where, and how value is shared. Cricket needs a living document that governs data rights, player privacy, digital revenue splits, and pathways for private capital.

Because the real battle isn’t between leagues here, it’s between systems that are investable and those that aren’t.

Building from scratch: The emerging market advantage

For new leagues and boards in places like the U.S., Japan, Nigeria, or Oman, the opportunity is even bigger.

You don’t have as much legacy politics. You can start with first principles.

Here’s the playbook:

• Design governance from day one: Mix public legitimacy with private agility.
• Copy the blueprints: Federations safeguard sporting integrity; commercial partners (like RedBird, Bruin, or Courtside – or perhaps a new one, built specifically for cricket) capitalize on innovation and infrastructure.
• Treat technology as infrastructure: Don't let every franchise build its own tech silo. ‘Bulk-buy’ the backend infrastructure i.e. smart venues, AI officiating, data collection so it works as a unified utility across the league .
• Institutionalize transparency: Report fan growth, digital performance, and ESG metrics just as you report match stats.

The emerging market/associate member boards that do this will leapfrog a century of inherited friction. They’ll turn ‘late entry’ into a structural advantage.

Governance is the growth engine

It’s fashionable to mock governance in sport as slow or archaic. But the truth is: governance is the growth engine.

Cricket’s full-member boards are essential. Their stability keeps the sport coherent. But stability mustn’t mean stasis. The NFL, NBA, and PGA have proven that you can modernize without losing control.

RedBird, Bruin, and Courtside offer three modern blueprints for how private capital can scale innovation without owning the soul of the game:

• RedBird builds ecosystems. This is investing in clubs, media, and data infrastructure that enhance long-term enterprise value, not just short-term hype.
• Bruin constructs global sports and media platforms. Its portfolio spans tech-driven ventures designed to commercialize content and data across leagues.
• Courtside backs the frontier, from early-stage startups in fan tech, AI, and gaming that reshape how sports are experienced, not just consumed.

These models are powerful, but they were built for the mature, single-country ecosystems of the NFL or the established European football pyramid. They don't automatically account for cricket's fragmented governance across 100+ member nations, its unique cultural dynamics, or the specific quirks of a sport that spans five days and twenty overs.

This creates a clear gap. Applying their lessons requires a 'translation layer’. It calls for a partner who not only understands modern sports business but who also speaks the native language of cricket and appreciates its unique place in the world. That specific, nuanced understanding is the real arbitrage

Cricket, by contrast, still views private investment as an ownership risk. That fear shows up in every discussion about investment in leagues like The Hundred or the BBL. But, in my opinion, the real opportunity for private capital lies outside the leagues. That is, in the unclaimed middle ground, the ‘picks and shovels’ we defined in Article 3. This is the investable, repeatable, and exportable layer: smart-venue design, broadcast tech, data infrastructure, AI startups, youth academies, and new fan IP.

The Church, the State, and the future of control

Sport’s sacred tension is between control and creativity.

The church protects heritage; the state builds the machine.

When they fuse, nothing moves.

When they separate intelligently (with clear governance, shared mission, and defined interfaces) you get velocity.

Boards should think less like hierarchies and more like holding companies i.e. owning IP, setting guardrails, and empowering specialists.

The job of a modern board isn’t to run everything. It’s to orchestrate everything.

Means, meaning, and money

Packy McCormick writes that “technology creates means, but not meaning.”

Cricket has reached that inflection point.

It has the means (the tech stack, the investment interest, the emerging markets) but not yet the meaning.

Meaning will come when those tools serve people, not just platforms.

When Raj’s bat sensor doesn’t just record data but helps extend his career.

When Alicia’s fan app doesn’t just deliver stats but connects her to her local club, her community, and her kids’ first cricket moments.

Meaning is what turns attention into belonging.

And belonging is what makes a sport investable.

Capital as catalyst, not owner

Private capital shouldn’t own cricket. It should enable it.

RedBird, Bruin, and Courtside have shown that capital can be a scaffolding, not a sculptor—helping sports build studios, AI labs, and data ecosystems that federations could never fund alone.

The future isn’t about selling more teams.

It’s about financing the connective tissue and the systems that make the whole sport faster, smarter, and more human.

That’s how private money earns its return without warping the soul of the game.

The meaning engine

The next era of cricket won’t be defined by who owns the rights.

It’ll be defined by who owns the relationship; between player and platform, fan and experience, governance and imagination.

Technology built the means.

Now it’s governance, investment, and creative courage that must deliver the meaning.

Because the real question isn’t what can we build?

It’s, what are we building for?

And if cricket gets that answer right, that is, if it can align boards, capital, and culture around a shared operating system for growth, it won’t just catch up. It will lead.

The only question left is who is brave enough to build it.

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