Following Shah Rukh Khan, Paytm’s founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma and Microsoft’s Indian-origin CEO Satya Nadella have become angel investors in the United States’ first-ever T20 cricket league, the Major League Cricket (MLC).
Bollywood star Shah Rukh has acquired the Los Angeles franchise which he named as the LA Knight Riders. Adobe’s Shantanu Narayen is also an early-stage investor. According to media reports, all of these investments are made in the American Cricket Enterprise which is reportedly the parent company for MLC.
Several high-profile investors from all over the USA and the famous Silicon Valley have participated in the investments. Reports suggest that the total inaugural introductory capital raised by the T20 Cricket League of USA is somewhere around USD 100 million.
Major League Cricket is set to launch in 2022 with six major franchises from Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Dallas and New York respectively. A development league will begin by 2021 with 24 US-based franchises.
Vijay Srinivasan, CEO, American Cricket Enterprise claims that T20 has been a very successful format for the Indian market and some reports even suggest that all major revenues of the cricket media come from those three-quarters of T20 cricket phase.
