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Sports' Most Daring Experiment Is Here 💉

Sports' Most Daring Experiment Is Here 💉

June 19, 2025

^{June 19, 2025 | Edition #19}

Hey there!
Think cricket’s a long shot in the U.S.? Think again. Major League Cricket’s third season is set to feature 34 matches, up from just 19 two years ago. Attendance is expected to top 70,000, and sponsors are jumping on board. Much like the Enhanced Games are capturing the attention of deep-pocketed investors, cricket’s rapid rise shows there’s plenty of room for more than just America’s big four sports. Let’s take a closer look.

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Today’s TLDR:

✨ Cricket is drawing big numbers. And big money.

🚀 Enhanced Games is the new darling of investors.

📖 The stories shaping the industry (and the lessons we learned this week)

Let’s dive in. 🚀

Cricket never had any roots in this country, right? Wrong!

Cricket was popular in the United States before the Civil War.
But during the war, baseball took precedence—it was easier to play.
Post-war, cricket became confined to only a handful of cricket clubs.

The resurgence of cricket (somewhat) went parallel with the South Asian immigration in the stateside. The current state of the game can be gauged from the numbers below:

The fast-paced, thrilling T20 format has fueled a surge in Major League Cricket’s popularity, especially among the American Gen-Z population.

Perfect timing for Cricket’s U.S. surge

MLC was launched in 2023, backed by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen. Has the investment paid off? The debut season’s numbers would answer that question:

✅ Over 70,000 fans turned out in the 7200 capacity Grand Prairie Stadium. [Forbes]

✅ The tournament generated $8M, beating the expectation by 60%. [Forbes]

✅ Live broadcasts were shown globally in 87 countries. [Seattle Orcas]

MLC’s second season came on the heels of the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup, co-hosted by the U.S. The cherry on top was Team USA beating Pakistan in a historic World Cup victory. Resultantly, Google Trends showed a 400% spike in U.S. searches for ‘T20 World Cup’.

And guess what? That was just the start.

Stars are well aligned for MLC

The T20 WC provided the perfect launching pad for franchise cricket. It will continue to grow. With the LA Olympics in 2028, MLC has plans to expand:

8️⃣ By 2027, eight franchises will be part of MLC.

🍁 By 2031, the first Canadian franchise will join the league.

🥝 It has secured sponsorship from the New Zealand Cricket Board.

The vision is ambitious. The framework is solid. You also have global tech leaders like Cognizant as the title sponsor of MLC. Lexus also joined the bandwagon last year.

🌱 MLC’s growth phase means little competition, offering brands a chance to reach an untapped, engaged audience at a fraction of the cost of major U.S. sports.

🌏 MLC’s primary audience is the South Asian diaspora, which is one of the fastest-growing immigrant communities (5.4 million) in the United States.

📣 MLC enables global brands to try regional campaigns and experimental advertising by leveraging the highly engaging audience base.

Take MethodHub’s partnership with the Texas Super Kings. The Lone Star State boasts the second-largest South Asian diaspora (2M) in the U.S. (Pew Research Center), making it a prime market for the brand. By aligning with a Texas-based team, MethodHub has positioned itself as a key player in the state’s evolving sports culture.

Now, with the Olympics around the corner and MLC growing, cricket is breaking the shackles of a niche sport. It’s a global sport undergoing Americanization. Brands getting in now are doing what Red Bull did for F1 in the U.S.—owning the story before it peaks.

A similar story can be found in the case of Enhanced Games. But before we move on to that, tell us this:

Would You Consider Attending a Cricket Match in Your Hometown?

Enhanced Games may seem sacrilegious—athletes using performance-enhancing drugs in public view. But high-profile investors, including Donald Trump Jr. and Peter Thiel, are betting big on its entertainment value, even as the establishment mocks it.

Donald Trump Jr. (1789 Capital)
Peter Thiel (Co-founder of PayPal)
Balaji Srinivasan (Co-founder of Counsyl)
Christian Angermayer (Serial entrepreneur)

They are betting not so much on its futuristic possibility but on its raw entertainment value. And that’s where brands see a strategic upside. Because in today’s world…

Disruption equals attention

Much like other renegade leagues banking on entertainment (think LIV Golf), the Enhanced Games position themselves as a rebellious, uncensored alternative to the ‘mundane’ Olympics. Enhanced athlete Kristian Gkolomeev set two 50m freestyle world records just last month.

They have made just enough noise:

📈 The chatter has drawn sponsors’ eyeballs.

🎉 New-age brands see this as a popular cultural movement.

🤑 Brands also see a low-cost, high-reward opportunity.

Moreover, the enhanced games put direct focus on performance-enhancing drugs. That essentially means three things:

💊 Biotech and pharma companies are eyeing the games as an opportunity to showcase their products.

🧪 For companies in biohacking and anti-aging, this is a chance to legitimize human optimization.

🏋️‍♂️ The ‘superhuman’ athletes will need specialized apparel, equipment, and shoes, creating a new revenue stream for manufacturers.

So, brands across different sectors are keeping an eye on Enhanced Games. And the athletes are drawing attention in the same way bodybuilders and UFC fighters did in the 90s. On top of it, the perception around PED has changed in recent years:

Now, whether the grand claims of Enhanced Games as the future hold any water or not, only time can tell. But from initial sponsors' interest, it is a certainty that the games will continue to command more money.

Health data is a commercial asset

According to Insider Sport, Enhanced Games plans to collect medical profiling and monetize athlete biometric data. “That data can fuel new clinical discoveries. We’ll be the principal distributors of enhancement drugs,” Founder Dr. Aron D’Souza said.

For athletes and their teams, detailed data means they can create a personalized nutrition plan.
For supplement brands, it means they can optimize their product further and fine-tune it.
It will also help pharma companies in understanding the human body in a way it has never done before.

We also face an ethical concern that cannot be ignored. For the current sponsors, it’s still a risk-reward game. A key reason why it’s not a surprise that only a handful of disruptive brands and their founders have come forward to back the project.

LIV Golf, to draw another parallel, also had to wait for four years before landing a wave of big-money established industry leaders. The road ahead for Enhanced Games will be a bit more treacherous. But the brands that are already aligning themselves with it are taking a bold step towards what they believe is the future of sports.

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