...NZ Cricket own a 25% stake in a US T20 Competition: is that a good idea?
 

...saw this in the paper this morning:

Cricket: Black Caps Facing Promotional Games In... | Stuff.co.nz

The money quote:

Unbelievable. And this:

I can't imagine that the investment in this project would have been cheap. So New Zealand Cricket have decided they want to be at the forefront of the movement of Cricket to the country with an almost fanatical interest in sports like Baseball and American Football. And this while 20-20 audiences and crowds are trending down.

Does anyone think this is a wise investment? Or are we going to be looking at a bankrupt NZ Cricket in 2015?

It's a waste of time and money that NZC can't afford imo. Would rather spend the money on our own game because the US will never care about cricket.

I would say that it's a good thing to own a stake in a market with potential for growth...

So then you agree that we shouldn't be investing in US cricket then.

I haven't done the research, but I'd assume that there's at least a few subcontinental exports that would make up the bulk of the interest at this point

Whether they can turn that into a profit or whether they can increase that base I don't know.

Terrible idea. Someone at NZC should have read "Netherland".

...from what I've been able to find on the net: the original pitch was for six franchise teams to participate, each of them paying $40 million for the honour. Unfortunately the people and companies that were approached balked at that offer and sent a collective letter of non-interest. The terms "over-valued" were bandied about. So instead of recruiting A Grade Stars: the league probably has to recruit from the ranks of Afghanistan, Ireland, Scotland and Kenya. (And probably salaried NZ players will be forced to play as well.)

Interestingly the article said that NZ Cricket is not investing direct cash: so would be interested in knowing what they have invested to get a 25% stake.

I've written a couple of business plans and if someone had shown me this one I would have said run away. No venues, no investors, a speculative customer base and the potential for a diluted end product. And NZ Cricket are locked in by contract and can't walk away. I'm sorry that most of my posts are about the clowns who are running NZ Cricket: but the people who are running NZ Cricket are a bunch of clowns.

Players and coaching staff I reckon.

Fair enough

If that is the case, and it's possible that it is, it would mean NZC would paying these coaches/players to do their stuff over there, so it's still a financial commitment offshore, when you think that these blokes can be doing the same at home for grassroots cricket.

Yeah absolutely.

Don't worry - the ICC is giving us money that we can contribute to the US game and not our own. Brilliant.

Big potential market. Just sayin'. Speculative, but who knows?

...I have a terrible feeling that NZ Cricket went into this thing with the same mindset. But its a terrible way to start the planning of a multi million dollar business. From what I can gather the bulk of the funding for the project was to come from the $40 million dollar per team franchise fees: yet six months from the proposed launch of the tournament they hadn't even made presentations to prospective franchise holders.

As we now know the prospective franchise holders said no to the asking price and the start date has been put forward to 2014 with the blame going on "the venues aren't ready." I don't even think they have any franchise holder locked in yet.

Here's an article from when the original deal was signed back in 2010: thanks Justin Vaughn. It looks like Prince EWS is correct: players will play in the league and the NZ team will play a number of matches in the States.

USA and New Zealand sign deal to promote cricket | USA Cricket News | ESPN Cricinfo

Here is a blog post that discusses the nature of cricket in the United States and what we are getting ourselves into:

The Silly Mid Off: American cricket and the soft bigotry of low expectations

With talk of "lawsuits" flying around the US cricket organizations it sounds like US cricket is a bigger basket case than NZ cricket.

wow, that's pretty compelling