II have a really great idea for an app. It will be huge. You should definitely fund it on the ground floor before this opportunity disappears. Basically, you’re missing out on reading this far at all. You need to invest NOW.
Or ideally beforehand. In the past, I funded my app because honestly, if you had any vision at all, the moment I said it was going to be huge, you would have invested in it straight away, and it is. Honestly, I’m not sure I even want your money right now. Please stop funding my app. I hate you. I’m literally smashing the app with a hammer just to stop you from investing. I hope you are happy with what you have done.
Maybe the investor pitch still needs some work. However, the app is a game changer. Essentially, it’s Shazam for cricket: point your phone at the game that’s on TV and the app instantly tells you what you’re watching, who the players and teams are, what brands are being advertised, and whether you like it .
The app, which I call CrickFlick or CricSwipe or CrickBait, aims to solve the only real downside to franchise cricket’s devastating expansion: the fact that it is an essentially meaningless, interchangeable product, sharing the same sounds, colors and Sounds repeat endlessly, like some kind of sport death.
How many times have you turned on your screen and seen a figure in a colorful nylon shirt unleashing a field-splitting leg kick while the commentator just shouted “Wow” and thought to yourself: Yes, I like cricket. It is emotionally and culturally embedded in my brain. I’m hungry for it. But what is that exactly? And is that Wayne Parnell?
Using facial recognition and real-time data, Point&Crick gives you all the stats and memes you need, telling you who to support, how to feel, and what products to buy to amplify those emotions. That’s the dream. I’m staring at a phone pointed at a screen as a voice says Canadian Hyper-Smash. Adam Rossington. LG fridge freezers. Alienation. Bang. Cricket solved.
In fact, the app was more of a cover story, prepared earlier this week in case I needed to make emergency small talk with high-profile sports media power players. Yes, I attended the lavishly staged ICC Cricket Matters conference in Mumbai so you didn’t have to. And it was pretty much what you’d expect, perhaps even a little more fundamentally disorienting.
The conference was full of interesting content. It was presented by serious people who have a real say in how cricket, and indeed any other sport you like, will be processed, consumed and violently reshaped over the next crucial years.
Pretending to be a moody tech entrepreneur seemed more appropriate to the venue and less draggy than being a sports hack. I had imagined other delegates nodding emphatically as I described my app, perhaps even a hum, a feeding frenzy. In case no one asked me anything at all. But actually it was about listening, eavesdropping on those in power in their natural habitat.
Among those attending the ICC Cricket Matters conference, the hundred is “something of a joke”. Photo: Nathan Stirk/ECB/Getty Images
I wanted to know more about “Brands love fans in the stands” and “Cricket Matters to Meta and Innovation at Play”: Part 1 – The ICC NIUM Hackathon. I wanted to understand the world of the eyeballs, the digital dissection of sport, the things that we sense and interpret as threats to value elements and existing structures, but which always happen somewhere else, never really in space.
Nobody tells the truth about this stuff. English sport is torn between painfully provincial concerns and greed-driven machinations that can never admit they are greed-driven machinations, always having to hide behind moronic words about heritage and respect for fans and sporting culture . Gianni Infantino pretends to be football Jesus. We have ethics laundry and equality laundry. The changes in the basic structure of the sport are happening in secret and immaturely, designed to minimize setbacks.
But not here, among the rainmakers who effectively oversee how sports are sliced up, repurposed and made into a streaming product where growth is always a good thing and new markets are the whole point.
So we entered a huge paneled room on the ninth floor of an elite hotel in Mumbai, adorned with exciting blue lights, sparkling chandeliers and a stage at the front for the heavyweights’ panels. The waiters and servers tended to the tables filled with delegates, but above all there was a sense of urgency. This space will shape your sport. It has sharp edges.
Brands Love Fans presented changemakers from Mastercard, Coca-Cola and DP World. They went into a blast of “I’m So Excited” by the Pointer Sisters, which was a little jarring since it was just the words “I want to love you, feel you, wrap myself around you” before the Music cut and everyone else sat down.
Who are these people? They are the commercial partners of the ICC and the partners of global sport, people who have a tangible influence on what will be played and what it will look like. You can participate in all meetings and reports as well as trunk and branch reviews. Money talks and bullshit walks. That’s the money part.
So what do they want? More visibility. Always new markets. They seem obsessed with bringing the experience to the 6-inch screen that most of the world has in their pockets. They want less bilateral cricket, more major ICC events, more franchises. They want a greater emphasis on the fundamental architecture, the dream of not only having a logo on the screen, but also “engagement”, surfing one’s passion, owning it.
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This is where the possibilities of the digital revolution in sport will be shaped, ultimately influencing the decision as to which parts should be thrown away and which should be overexposed. We can care about heritage, values and sport. The distorted physical product we end up with is carved out by these forces.
Yes, there were some high-profile discussions about completely parallel consumer experiences and the shift in this World Cup from linear viewing to non-linear and hybrid viewing. Someone said: “Proximity to cricket leads to very passionate looks.” Someone said: “There are no more discrete spaces, only overlapping dimensions.” Someone said: “We don’t want to go out and boil the ocean.” The World Cup -Pokal sat there in front and listened to all this. But there were also parts that made you cringe.
“The best part was an explanation as to why India projects cricket the way it does.” Photo: Debajyoti Chakraborty/NurPhoto/Shutterstock
Basically, everyone is convinced that everything will change very quickly. “What technology does to every sector, it will do to sport. It will change the definition of what sport is.” “Sport will change more drastically in the next three to four years than it has in the last 50 years, both in terms of how we consume it and in terms of how we consume it the question of who we consider to be fans.”
Oh wow. They said it loudly. This feeling of irreversible change does not exist in your mind. And these are the people tasked with making it happen.
A woman from Mastercard explained with devastating clarity why Mastercard was in sports because “when we go to a bank, they say, ‘What assets are you offering us?’” So this is where sports comes into play. As an asset for a bank, “a key passion point” for those sweet, sweet, untapped markets.
There was some talk about diversity and even better, some insight into why that talk exists. “Diversity, sameness and indecision are a big part of Generation Z, the Millennials. This is why brands need to bring elements to address this issue.” Wait. I thought you actually meant it.
The best part was actually an explanation as to why India projects cricket the way it is. Indian policymakers want these big global brands to invest and cricket is the driver that directly drives this consumer economy. “There’s still a lot to do,” said the Coca-Cola guy happily. And India is in many ways a happy, hungry and confident country. Consumerism and brand worship are an element of this trust. Cricket has become an extension of both things.
There was some interesting conversation about how cricket can be labeled as a sub-continental sport, and there was a slight sense of frustration among the brand people that England and Australia might not be able to keep up. Small talk at the break confirmed that The Hundred (“Is that… dead now?”) is something of a joke in this company.
As lunchtime approached, it was the turn of the meta people, the meta guys who came to bowl high-fives and fire up the crowd to talk about “How meta with influencers and the ICC in the cricket world “works together” to discuss “cup”. The brothers talked about “three billion active users per month” and how the most important thing in the “connected experience of connected apps” is the move away from one-dimensional consumption.
At this point it was hard to escape the sneaking suspicion that these were the people who might actually be funding CrickZam, not because it is revolutionary (which it is) but because no one really knows what the future of the sport, or indeed everyone, is forms of human relationships will look like. actually look like that. This is all potential energy and new forms; and it’s totally winnable.
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