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

Why smart money should be moving beyond the obvious

Cricket has never commanded more attention, or looked more uncertain.

The headlines are dazzling: billion-dollar media deals, soaring franchise valuations, new leagues appearing in every corner of the map. But underneath the glitter, the sport remains fragile: too many games, too little structure, fans drifting, and value leaking away.

For investors, that tension is the real opportunity. The money is there. The foundations are not.

Two stories, one sport

There are two versions of cricket running in parallel. One is booming: IPL valuations in the tens of billions, global rights climbing, new markets opening in the US and Middle East. The other is chaotic: overlapping seasons, boards and franchises pulling in opposite directions, a calendar that never breathes.

This isn’t failure. It's misalignment. And where systems don’t line up, capital slips through the cracks.

The leak

The sport’s weaknesses show up everywhere.

Boards focus on the next broadcast cycle instead of the next decade. Teams spend for trophies today without planning for tomorrow. Administrators launch new leagues to grab headlines, not to last.

The result: empty venues outside short bursts, fan data siloed across dozens of platforms, promising markets excluded from the calendar altogether. Cricket has money flowing in at the top, but too little structure to turn that flow into long-term growth.

The picks and shovels

The most enduring fortunes aren’t made by chasing the shiny prize. They are made by building the tools that everyone else needs.

That is what ‘picks and shovels’ means: in any boom, the lasting winners aren’t the speculators but the people who supply the essentials. During the American gold rush, it wasn’t the miners who got rich; it was the merchants selling them the equipment, the tents, even the denim.

Translate that to cricket and the point is clear. The real opportunity isn’t in owning another franchise. It is in the infrastructure, the technology, and the media platforms that the entire ecosystem depends on. These are the levers that can align meaning, rhythm, and capital, the very things Articles 1 and 2 showed are currently missing.

That is the thesis. The rest is detail.

The investment curve

Cricket’s opportunity is extraordinary given its footprint across more than 100 ICC members. Many have grown and thrived not because of the capital and governance they have received, but in spite of them. Imagine the upside when money is channelled with discipline and governance finally matches ambition.

• Formation markets — Nigeria, the Philippines, and dozens of others where passion outpaces infrastructure. The play isn’t franchises. It is laying the grassroots foundation so that fandom and pathways can thrive. That means academies, entry-level coaching systems, and community-driven competitions that anchor the sport locally. Leagues can follow later, but they won’t succeed without this base. Local content hubs also matter: highlights, interviews, even social clips that give young fans stories to latch onto.
• Growth markets — competitions with traction such as the women’s game, Major League Cricket in the US, or leagues in South Asia like Nepal. They need disciplined capital, local players, and cricket-specific infrastructure that serves their communities. Strong venues and tailored academies can turn these experiments into permanent fixtures. The key here is sustainability; fans stay engaged when the product feels embedded in their world, not parachuted in from elsewhere.
  
  
• Mature markets — the BBL, The Hundred, the PSL, the CPL. These competitions have steady fanbases but are under-leveraged when it comes to data and technology. AI-powered scheduling, personalised engagement tools, and shared ticketing and streaming platforms could make them more efficient and more profitable. They can also act as testbeds for global innovation, places to trial new media formats or in-venue experiences that can scale across the sport.
  
  
• Peak market — the IPL. Already commanding premiums, but the upside remains vast. Consolidation, roll-ups, and smarter packaging of the product are just the start. The league has done an impressive job juicing media rights in its home market. Now the growth lies in global expansion, enhanced matchday and fan experiences, and deeper use of data to monetise audiences. With the right moves, its value could multiply again.

Across every stage, the real fortunes aren’t in the trophy assets. They are in the picks and shovels, the systems that power the machine.

Where the real arbitrage lies

This is where the opportunity truly sits. Cricket’s arbitrage doesn’t lie in chasing the next franchise. It lies in the overlooked layers that turn the sport from fragmented to compounding:

• New forms of media and content that bring consistency to storytelling
  
  
• Infrastructure and venues that generate revenue year-round
  
  
• Technology that unifies fan data and engagement

These are the tools that bind the game together.

Infrastructure & venues

Cricket’s storylines are endless, but its storytelling is fragmented. Boards and leagues each run their own channels, with wildly different quality. Fans bounce across platforms and often give up.

The upside lies in new media models: unified content hubs, personalised highlights, and creator-driven ecosystems that speak directly to fans. Short-form clips are how Gen Z enters sport; diaspora communities rely on them to stay connected to cricket back home. Independent creators in India and US diaspora-driven platforms are already proving the appetite is there.

What is missing is scale. A platform that centralises this momentum — combining grassroots clips, pro highlights, and creator-led storytelling — could unlock a global fan economy that cricket has barely tapped.

Technology

Technology is the bridge that ties it all together. Major League Baseball built MLBAM, a digital spine so valuable Disney bought it outright. Cricket has nothing close.

The ICC has made progress with ICC.tv and its fan data team, but duplication still dominates. Boards and leagues operate disconnected systems, most of them fragile. The result is inefficiency and broken fan journeys.

A single digital spine could be cricket’s most valuable asset, worth more over time than any one media deal. Imagine a fan in Durban buying a ticket, watching highlights that night, and ordering merchandise from the same platform. That is not a dream. It is a matter of building the rails.

The untapped markets

Nowhere is the opportunity clearer than in cricket’s frontier nations. Passion and quality have long outstripped investment. Afghanistan’s rise is proof of what happens when talent gets a pathway and an opportunity: from the margins to the World Cup. More recently, the USA’s run to the Super 8s last year shows how fast a country can break through once the pieces click.

And the biggest untapped market of all might be the one Alicia, from Article 1, represents: the drifting digital fan in an emerging cricket market who never sees herself in the system. If cricket’s new tools don’t find a way to bring her in, another sport’s will.

These countries and these fans didn’t thrive because of global governance and capital, but in spite of them. Imagine what happens when they finally get both.

From chaos to compounding

Cricket has all the raw materials: global reach, billion-strong fandom, digital-native culture, endless rivalries. What it lacks is the container to hold them.

Articles 1 and 2 showed how meaning and rhythm disappear without discipline. Article 3 closes the loop: until capital funds the picks and shovels, nothing lines up.

Cricket’s next fortune will be made by the builders, not the buyers.

And this is just the start. Future pieces will dive deeper into each of these opportunities - from academies to digital platforms, from frontier markets to reimagined venues - showing how smart money can turn cricket’s chaos into compounding value.

This article is the first step in mapping cricket’s investment landscape. In the coming series we will break down these “picks and shovels,” the overlooked opportunities that will shape the sport’s future, one by one.

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