You know, I’ve now seen a whole string of articles reporting that San Francisco, Chicago, New York, New Jersey, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Orlando, and Dallas are all going to get new cricket stadiums as part of a $2.4 billion dollar spending spree by the organizers of a new professional cricket league, and I feel it’s my duty to say: No, they’re not, everybody chill. At least, they’re not any more than when Global Sports Ventures announced it with a press release back in January, then proceeded not to announce any actual stadium plans over the next six months. Here’s an SBNation interview where GSV chair Jay Pandya talks about how starting a pro cricket league (note for anyone who actually cares about cricket: really a T20 league, which isn’t regular cricket) is totally something that could happen because some Americans traveled to Australia to watch the cricket World Cup and there were three exhibition games in the U.S. in 2015.
Not asked in that interview, or any of the recent articles: Why on earth should we take seriously a business plan that involves trying to earn back $2.4 billion in stadium investments by selling tickets to a version of cricket that most cricket fans don’t even like? It’d be kind of rude, I know, but that’s what journalists are there for, right?