By Karolos Grohmann and Amlan Chakraborty
July 27 (Reuters) - When cricket returns to the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, it will bring far more than bats, balls and wickets. Its inclusion reflects a strategic calculation by Olympic leaders that the surest route to billions of new viewers runs through India, cricket’s commercial heartland and a country they believe is increasingly central to the Games’ future.
Cricket, absent from the Olympics since 1900, offers the International Olympic Committee
something no recent addition has: direct access to a fan base of more than 2 billion people and, crucially, the commercial power of the Indian market. As the Games seek a younger and broader audience, it may prove the most valuable sport added to the Olympic programme in decades.
Cricket has been one of the major global sports not to feature in the Olympics, IOC Sports Director Pierre Ducrey told Reuters in an interview.
"It is very strong in markets where maybe you could say the Olympic Games today may not have penetrated as much as they have in other markets," he said.
"Cricket will bring to the LA Games audiences that may not necessarily tune in regularly to watch the Olympic Games," Ducrey added. "It's a win-win compromise where we'll give them more opportunities, and they will definitely strengthen our appeal in markets that are very strongly interested in cricket and sometimes mostly in cricket."
INTEREST IN BROADCASTING RIGHTS
The sport's imminent return to the Olympics has already generated demand, with the IOC confirming "strong interest" in broadcasting rights for the Indian subcontinent for the 2028 Games.
That would amount to "a multiple" of the value of the 2024 Games contract, IOC Television and Marketing Services Managing Director Anne-Sophie Voumard told Indian media late last year. The Paris 2024 contract was estimated to be worth around $30 million.
"Regarding media rights for the LA28 Olympic Games in the Indian subcontinent, we are currently engaged in constructive discussions with a number of key players across the region," an IOC spokesperson told Reuters.
"We can confirm that there has been strong interest from the market, reflecting both the momentum behind the LA28 Olympic Games and the addition of cricket to the sports programme."
There are already close relationships between the Olympics and cricket in the region's media market. Billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Indian broadcaster JioStar, formed from the Reliance Industries and Walt Disney merger of their Indian media assets in 2024, owned the rights for the Paris 2024 Games and the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Games, and also holds the rights to broadcast the Indian Premier League, the country's top cricket league.
Ambani's wife Nita is an IOC member and hosted the 2023 IOC session in Mumbai.
T20 RISE
Cricket returned to the Olympic conversation after the IOC recognised the International Cricket Council in 2010, but the sport's traditional five-day Tests and eight-hour one-day internationals remained impractical for the Games. The breakthrough came with the explosive rise of Twenty20, a three-hour format whose popularity coincided with IOC reforms in 2014 allowing host cities to propose additional sports, paving the way for Los Angeles to bring cricket back in 2028.
Beyond its brevity, the high volatility and international reach of T20 made it tailor-made for the Olympics, said ICC Chief Executive Sanjog Gupta, who was previously the CEO of sports and live experiences at JioStar.
"The jeopardy or the unpredictability that live sports benefit from is maximised in this format," Gupta told Reuters. Unlike Test matches, which are restricted to the ICC's 12 full members, T20 can claim to be cricket's true global format.
"Avenues of participation have been expanded significantly to really position this format as cricket's handshake with the world," Gupta said. "It's global, more accessible and representative. T20 ticks all the right boxes."
LONG PROCESS
LA28 will mark the end of a 21-year journey that started with cricket's provisional recognition by the IOC back in 2007.
"The interests of some of the federations, the interests of the Olympic movement at large, sometimes converge, sometimes they don't," Ducrey said. "And it took some time for the interests of the International Cricket Council, of the sport of cricket at large, and those of the Olympic movement to align in a more significant way that led to the discussions around the 2028 program."
"So a long journey, but I would say one that was consistently getting our movements and our sports, and our interests closer and closer."
Cricket’s commercial rise has been fuelled by the Indian Premier League, which has transformed the sport over the past two decades, attracting the world’s leading players and becoming one of the most valuable sports competitions globally. The 10-team IPL is now valued at around $20 billion, with the 2026 season drawing 1.2 billion viewers across platforms.
OLYMPIC FUTURE
Cricket is expected to remain in the Games beyond 2028. The 2032 Games will be held in Brisbane, Australia — another country with a strong cricketing tradition — and India is heavily pushing Ahmedabad to host the Games in 2036.
Beyond geographic expansion, cricket offers a highly coveted demographic.
According to ICC chief executive Gupta, nearly 50% of followers are under 35 and 35% are under 27, making cricket "future-ready".
By including cricket, the Olympic movement is poised to reap a significant "demographic dividend", said Gupta. "As the Olympic movement looks to the future of its own significance and relevance of sport in various markets, cricket can potentially play a huge role in driving that forward," he said.
"Cricket is the fastest growing large-scale team sport in the world. It's a massive opportunity for the Olympic movement to ride on."
(Reporting by Karolos Grohmann and Amian Chakraborty; Editing by Ossian Shine and Rosalba O'Brien)
