This is the 12th 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, part nine, part ten and part 11 and get more from Eddie on his Substack and connect with him on LinkedIn.

It started with a rare couple of hours off from the kids on a Saturday, so I flicked on my sports streaming app to catch my boys, the Orlando Magic, rallying late against the Raptors. I love watching US sports, having lived there for five years, but I also follow the business of US sports very closely and am always thinking about it in the context of cricket’s opportunity to scale and grow.

Then, something else popped up on the feed that stopped me and caught my attention.

It was a broadcast for Unrivaled, the new 3-on-3 women’s basketball league founded by WNBA stars Breanna Stewart and Napheesa Collier. I’d been tracking it from a distance, mostly interested in how they were building a new form of IP separate to an established league and how they were handling player equity (the highest average salaries in women’s professional sports history). But I wasn’t prepared for the visual.

I saw the Xfinity Mobile Arena in Philadelphia absolutely packed to the rafters.

I had to double-check whether this was a finals series. It wasn’t, it was a regular-season tour stop for a startup league that didn’t exist two years ago. Yet, 21,490 fans had filled the arena, a record for a regular-season professional women’s basketball game in the US, with average ticket prices hovering around $165.

The atmosphere wasn’t ‘supportive’ or ‘worthy’ (terms often patronizingly applied to women’s sport by legacy administrators), it was electric. It was a premium product.

That Saturday morning was a lightbulb moment. If a startup league can pack an NBA arena and command premium ticket yields by stripping basketball down to its most exciting elements (3v3) and marketing it unapologetically to a new demographic, why are we still trying to sell the future of women’s cricket as merely a ‘smaller’ version of the men’s game?

This isn’t just a US phenomenon. It’s the solution to the ‘Alicia problem’. Alicia, our nineteen-year-old Toronto fan, represents the millions who discover cricket through a 15-second viral clip of Smriti Mandhana but then hit the legacy fog of the men’s game. The men’s game, with its overlapping leagues and century-old jargon, is a product built for someone else. The women’s game is the only clean sheet entry point for her generation.

When we talk about the future of cricket over the next 10–25 years, the women’s game isn’t just a pillar of that conversation. It is the single biggest arbitrage opportunity in global sport.

Here is what that future looks like, if we have the discipline to build it based on data and innovation not tradition.

The fan paradigm: The ‘Trust Premium’

For decades, the industry has judged women’s cricket by men’s KPIs: “How many people watched the full match?” “What was the gate receipt compared to the men’s World Cup?”

This is a fundamental error in valuation. We are measuring a high-growth asset class with the ruler of a mature, dividend-yielding stock. The direction of the data is clear: women’s sports revenue grew 4.5 times faster than men’s sports revenue between 2022 and 2024 (McKinsey).

As Michael Broughton notes in his analysis of the sector, the mistake isn’t the numbers; it’s the lens. Men’s sport is a volume game: it relies on mass aggregation, tribal loyalty (‘my dad took me here’), and passive consumption. Women’s sport is a value game: it relies on advocacy, connection, and high-intent commercial behavior.

The data is screaming that the commercial engine of women’s sport operates differently. It is driven by what we can call the ‘Trust Premium’.

Research from the Women’s Sport Trust and Wasserman’s The Collective highlights a distinct commercial advantage that the men’s game simply does not possess:

• Higher conversion: 9.96 million consumers are more likely to buy from a brand that sponsors women’s sport compared to men’s (up two percent year-on-year).
• The trust factor: Gen Z fans are 25 percent more likely to trust a brand based on its sponsorship of women’s sports compared to older generations.

ROI efficiency: In the UK, every £1 invested in women’s sport sponsorship has been shown to generate a distinct return in customer value because the fanbase views purchasing as a form of advocacy, not just consumption.

This changes the math for investors. In men’s cricket, you pay a premium for eyeballs but get low conversion. In women’s cricket, you pay a discount for reach but get super-fan conversion rates. This is the definition of an undervalued asset.

This is where the value game meets Alicia’s reality. Alicia and her generation don't consume sports passively; they consume as an act of advocacy. When she sees a brand partnering with the WPL or a standalone women’s tournament, she views that purchase as a vote for the world she wants to live in. This is the ‘Trust Premium’ in action. For her, the women’s game is unburdened by the traditional baggage of men’s sport, making it a high-trust environment where her loyalty is actually earned, not assumed.

The athlete economy: Where narrative beats loyalty

To understand where cricket needs to go, we must look at the phenomenon of Caitlin Clark in the US.

For those in the cricket world who haven’t followed it: Caitlin Clark didn’t just play basketball. She became an economic force. Her presence in the NCAA tournament drove the women’s final to 18.9 million viewers, beating the men’s final (14.8 million) for the first time in history. This has carried on into the WNBA with analysis showing Clark was responsible for 26.5 percent of all WNBA economic activity in 2024.

She proved a thesis that is vital for investors to understand: Individual narratives can eclipse team loyalty.

In cricket, we are already seeing this ‘athlete economy’ take shape with hard numbers:

• Smriti Mandhana: She isn’t just a batter; she is a conglomerate. With an estimated net worth of US$4 million and an endorsement portfolio of 15+ brands (including Nike, Red Bull, and Hyundai), she commands endorsement fees of up to INR 1.5 crore (~US$180k) per deal. Her social engagement rivals top Bollywood stars, proving she is a cultural icon, not just a cricketer.
• Ellyse Perry: Dubbed ‘Australia’s most marketable athlete,’ Perry has shattered the glass ceiling for female athletes, becoming one of the first to surpass AU $1 million in annual earnings. She is the living proof that a million-dollar cricketer doesn’t need a men’s contract to be a premium commercial asset.

To Alicia, Smriti Mandhana isn’t just a player for India; she is a vertical brand. In the NBA, Alicia follows players from team to team, platform to platform. She expects that same athlete-first economy in cricket. Because the women’s game is still in its venture phase, it has the opportunity to let these stars own their narratives in a way the men’s game, bound by legacy broadcast restrictions, simply can’t. Alicia doesn’t want to watch a pre-packaged highlights reel; she wants the behind-the-scenes, the training data, and the personality. She wants the ‘Caitlin Clark’ experience, where the individual story is the engine of the entire economy.

The future of women’s cricket fandom will be defined by this Athlete Economy.

The Gen Z shift: Data shows that modern fans, particularly the digitally native Gen Z, follow athletes first and teams second. They are platform-agnostic. They follow the player, not the competition

The content gap: Currently, men’s cricket restricts player access to protect broadcast rights. Women’s cricket, hungry for visibility, has the opportunity to open the doors. The future belongs to the leagues that allow these stars to own their highlights, stream their training, and monetize their own narratives.

Why the next growth format won’t look like the last one

This leads to the most critical product decision we face and one that may be a little controversial: I am not convinced that 11-a-side cricket on a full-sized oval is the right growth vehicle for the next 25 years of the women’s game.

We need to bifurcate the product.

For the Big Three – Australia, England, and India – and perhaps a small group of other established Full Members, the 11-a-side Test and T20 models are likely to remain the symbolic and commercial peaks of the ecosystem. Tests retain the historical weight and narrative prestige, even if played sparingly. T20, meanwhile, has become the format through which scale is achieved and new audiences are captured. The sold-out Women’s T20 World Cup final at the MCG in 2020, attended by 86,174 fans, demonstrated that when packaged as a marquee event, the format can deliver both spectacle and mass appeal.

The growth engine: The ‘Unrivaled’ model

But for bilateral series and specifically for emerging nations (such as Brazil, Thailand, Rwanda, USA), we need to look at what Unrivaled did with basketball. They condensed the game to 3-on-3 to maximize star power and action.

Cricket should seriously consider a six-a-side or seven-a-side professional format as its primary growth vehicle for new markets.

• Talent density: It is much easier for a nation like Japan or Germany to find six competitive athletes than 11. The drop-off in skill level for the ninth, 10th, and 11th player in emerging nations is often steep, diluting the quality of the product.
• Action density: Fewer fielders means more gaps, more boundaries, and a faster product.
• Star Amplification: In a six-a-side game, your ‘Caitlin Clark’ faces 20 balls, not six. She is on screen for 50 percent of the game.

This does not replace 11-a-side cricket. It does what T20 once did by creating a growth rail the traditional game cannot build for itself. Barriers to entry fall. Entertainment value per minute rises.

For Alicia, this format simply fits the world she already inhabits. A six-a-side game takes the Mandhana spark she discovers on TikTok and makes it the entire product. It becomes an on-ramp, not a compromise, allowing new fans to learn the emotional beats of cricket without being buried in its technical complexity.

Just as importantly, the women’s game allows cricket to rethink formats, rights, and physical environments from first principles, without the legacy constraints that weigh down the men’s sport.

The commercial pivot: The case for unbundling

The days of bundling women’s rights with men’s as a free bonus are over. That model obscured the true value of the asset for decades. The future is unbundling.

We saw the proof of concept with the Women’s Premier League (WPL) in India. By selling the teams and rights separately from the men’s IPL, the BCCI generated a staggering US$951 million in team auction value and US$116 million in media rights.

This wasn’t a donation. It was a market correction. It proved that when you create a clean asset class, distinct from the men’s game, the market will price it aggressively.

The ChatGPT signal

If you want further proof that new money is entering the chat, look at the WPL’s latest partnership. The league has signed ChatGPT as a Premier Partner for the 2026-27 seasons. This is a watershed moment. A global AI giant didn’t choose the IPL or the Ashes, they chose a women’s league. They see the WPL as the innovation platform, a place to test new tech with a digitally native audience.

The Essex proof of concept

You also don’t just need to be a new franchise in India to see this shift. It is happening in the shires of England right now.

Essex County Cricket Club (a 150-year-old institution) has just announced a first-of-its-kind partnership with Pitch15, appointing them as the exclusive commercial partner for their women’s programme.

Crucially, this wasn’t a bundled add-on to a men’s shirt deal. It frames the women’s team as a distinct commercial entity with its own growth strategy, separate from the men’s County Championship side. Essex explicitly recognized that to grow the asset (visibility, participation, matchday experience), they needed a bespoke commercial vehicle, not a legacy one.

From Pitch15’s perspective, this is proof-of-concept that women’s cricket has a standalone commercial future. They are not just selling a logo on a shirt; they are building a dedicated commercial model around the women’s team.

This is the signal. When a traditional county club stops selling its women’s team as an add-on and starts selling it as an exclusive growth partner, the market has shifted.

Visualizing the shift: The flywheel

The ‘Women’s Sports Flywheel’ report by the Women’s Sport Trust breaks this down.

The legacy flywheel (men’s): History → Fans → Revenue. (Linear)

The venture flywheel (women’s): Investment → Visibility → Engagement → Revenue. (Cyclical)

The data shows that when you inject capital first (investment), the conversion rate of the resulting fans is significantly higher.

The private equity prediction

This shift is unlocking a new class of investor: the asset-specific capitalist, exemplified by groups like Mercury 13 and Michele Kang’s Kynisca Sports International.

• The strategy: These groups are not buying women’s teams as vanity projects. They are buying them to run as standalone P&Ls, unencumbered by the debts or legacy costs of men’s franchises.
• The MCO model: They are building Multi-Club Ownership (MCO) networks by owning teams in the US, Europe, and beyond to share data, scouting, and commercial best practices.

Less than two weeks ago, Ariel Investments (managing US$14 billion) announced its dedicated fund, Project Level, with US$250 million in committed capital targeting professional leagues, teams, and sports-adjacent platforms (e.g. media, technology).

In the next 10 years, I expect to see standalone women’s cricket franchises trading at valuations that rival today’s men’s second-tier T20 leagues. Why? Because they offer cleaner IP, higher growth multiples (starting from a lower base), and direct access to that “Trust Premium” demographic.

The ‘No legacy’ advantage: Emerging markets

Finally, the most exciting growth is not going to come from the traditional powers. It’s going to come from those with no legacy overhang.

In men’s cricket, innovation is often stifled by 150 years of tradition, politics, and fixed calendars. Women’s cricket in emerging markets is a greenfield site.

Brazil: The women-first revolution

Brazil is the perfect case study. In 2020, Cricket Brasil did something radical: they awarded central professional contracts to their women’s team before their men’s team.

They inverted the Commonwealth model. Instead of using men’s cricket to subsidize the women, they bet that their route to global relevance (and Olympic funding) lay through the women’s game. It worked. They are now dominant regionally and attracting global attention, proving that you don’t need a century of history to build a high-performance programme.

Thailand: The performance miracle

Thailand, not exactly a traditional cricket powerhouse, has broken into the top tier (achieving a top 10 ranking in T20Is and qualifying for a World Cup) not through massive budgets, but through a centralized coaching structure that outperforms nations with ten times their resources. They sweep gold medals at the SEA Games because they treat the women’s team as their primary national asset.

The Olympic catalyst (LA28)

Cricket’s inclusion in the Los Angeles 2028 Olympics is a genuine accelerant for the women’s game. It marks the sport’s return to the Olympic programme for the first time since 1900, with both men’s and women’s T20 competitions confirmed.

Olympic status matters not because it guarantees growth, but because it changes institutional incentives. In many countries, access to national high-performance funding, Olympic committee support, and government-backed athlete pathways is structurally linked to Olympic recognition. For emerging cricket nations this creates the conditions for cricket to be prioritised in ways that were previously unavailable.

The result is not instant success, but a clearer funding pathway, improved legitimacy with public institutions, and a stronger case for long-term investment in women’s programmes.

The inevitable asset

If I’m an investor looking at cricket today, the men’s game is a peak market asset. It is expensive, saturated, and while the yields are steady, the growth curve is flattening under the weight of its own legacy.

The women’s game is the venture capital asset. It is starting from a lower base with a clean sheet operating system, meaning the upside multiples are exponentially higher.

This is why women’s cricket sits at the center of how cricket can rethink capital, formats, and global expansion. It is not just a moral imperative; it is the logical allocation of growth capital. But capturing that upside requires us to abandon the old playbook and adopt the venture-led flywheel.

To win, we must commit to three non-negotiables:

• Format disruption: We must stop treating the women’s game as a lite version of the men’s 11-a-side tradition. By embracing high-intensity, six- or seven-a-side formats (The Unrivaled model), we maximize action density and ensure our superstars are on screen for 50 percent of the broadcast.
• The athlete economy: We must allow players to own their narratives. In a world where Alicia follows the player, not the badge, the value lies in the vertical brand, that is, stars who can own their highlights, training data, and direct-to-fan connections.
• Commercial unbundling: We must treat women’s cricket as a standalone asset class. When rights are unbundled, the market stops seeing an add-on and starts seeing an innovation platform.

The crowd in Philadelphia showed up for a great product, packaged correctly, and priced proudly. Alicia is waiting for cricket to do the same. She doesn’t want to be tolerated by a legacy sport; she wants to be the primary stakeholder in a new one.

But here is the reality of venture assets: the arbitrage window does not stay open forever. Right now, women’s cricket is mispriced. The market hasn’t fully priced in the value of the unbundled assets, the emerging market growth, or the data rights.

In ten years, we won’t be writing articles about whether to invest. We’ll be writing checks to the ones who did.