Cricket Is World’s No. 2 Sport. Can New Docuseries Add U.S. Audience?

A production company that’s made documentaries with athletes like Kobe Bryant and Tiger Woods is setting its sights on cricket.

On Monday, GOATS Entertainment announced its next project, The GOATS of Cricket, a docuseries that will come out next year highlighting a dozen of the sport’s all-time greats. It’s a similar model to the company’s two earlier series, which highlighted a number of athletes through the eyes of sports photographer Walter Iooss. The first iteration aired on ESPN and ABC in 2021, and the second will debut early next year.

Focusing on cricket is an ambitious task. It’s the world’s second-most popular sport behind soccer, but doesn’t have a strong foothold in the U.S. This summer’s T-20 World Cup, partially hosted by the U.S., helped pick up steam for the sport, especially given the unlikely success of Team USA led by Oracle software engineer Saurabh Netravalkar.

But it’s still a long way from mainstream popularity. Luckily, the model already exists in Netflix’s Drive to Survive, which has remained wildly popular for the streamer in its sixth season. The show resonates because of its characters, not by assuming any prior knowledge of the sport.

The idea for a show about cricket didn’t happen because the U.S.-based GOATS staff is wild about the sport. CEO Joe DiMuro tells Front Office Sports his team picked up on the growing popularity of cricket domestically and attended some matches and networking events at the T-20 World Cup this summer. That’s where they solidified their partnership with Wisden, the makers of the sport’s annual reference book known as the “Bible of Cricket,” which will serve as the encyclopedic engine for the show.

“Money is paying attention,” DiMuro says. “Meaning, investors, strategics, private equity, venture capital, athletes—domestic-based athletes who are looking at cricket teams and or leagues of which they can enter as a business venture—which is always a good indicator of what’s happening with the sport.”

The biggest question in all of this, of course, is the media deal. The reason Drive to Survive is so popular is because it’s widely available on Netflix. GOATS Entertainment doesn’t yet have a distributor for the series. The show will need a deal on a major U.S. network or streamer to take off in the U.S., but it also needs a foothold in the countries that are already mad about cricket, like India, Pakistan, the U.K., and Australia. Those deals haven’t been struck yet, but DiMuro says targeting international markets will be a “critical part” of the show’s media strategy.

Disney, which already partners with the parent company (Reliance) of the Indian streaming network JioTV, could be a potential landing spot, especially given the production company already aired the first GOATS series on ESPN and ABC. And, ESPN+ already owns a good portion of cricket matches in the U.S.

“We are looking to build a multi-pronged, multi-channel, omni-channel approach,” DiMuro says. “Primary exhibition, maybe it’s one network, maybe it’s one streaming provider that has access to these international countries, and then there’s probably a secondary and tertiary window.”

DiMuro says production will begin next year, with an ideal release date around August or September.