2024-10-21 20:55:00
Keen to preserve a model based on the use of existing or temporary infrastructure, while developing commercial opportunities, the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games Organizing Committee is considering holding the Olympic cricket tournament on the East Coast. of the United States.
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En prediction of the 2024 Olympic Games, the Paris 2024 Organizing Committee had chosen Teahupo’o in French Polynesia to orchestrate the surfing events and this, while several sites on the Atlantic coast had applied to qualify for the competitions.
Despite the distance from France, the organizers then focused on a world-renowned spot capable of offering spectacular images for international broadcasters, all with the aim of highlighting an overseas French territory.
With a view to the Los Angeles 2028 Games, the Organizing Committee chaired by Casey Wasserman is moving towards an essentially equivalent strategy with regard to the decentralized dimension of the system to remove certain events from the sole Californian framework. For LA 2028, this strategy must make it possible to combine expertise in targeted infrastructures and commercial opportunities, with the organizers boasting since the start of the project their desire to establish the Olympic model of a new era.
In recent months, the organizational body has thus recorded the relocation of the competitions canoe-kayak slalom towards the Riversport Rapids Whitewater Center in Oklahoma City (Oklahoma), although it is nearly 2,200 kilometers from the “City of Angels”.
In the same way, rather than building a substantial facility in California which might have to face management difficulties after the Games, LA 2028 also chose Oklahoma City – and more precisely the Softball Park – to position the Olympic softball tournament, one of the additional sports included in the 2028 Olympic program.
Today, a new window seems about to open well beyond California and even the American West Coast, as suggested by Casey Wasserman, on the sidelines of the Texas Business of Sports Summit organized in Austin, Friday October 18, 2024.
To mark the return of cricket to the Olympic scene, and as was mentioned at the start of summer 2024, Casey Wasserman and his teams are considering the possibility of having the different matches of the Olympic cricket tournament on the other side of the country. .
By planning on the East Coast, the Organizing Committee for the 2028 Olympic Games would first be able to request stadiums that could better meet the technical requirements linked to the holding of cricket in its Olympic form.
As such, LA 2028 could draw inspiration from the framing operated during the T20 World Cup co-organized from June 1 to 29, 2024 between Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Guyana, Saint Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, and finally the United States.
On American soil, three stadiums were mobilized, namely the Central Broward Park & Broward County Stadium of 25,000 places in Lauderhill (Florida), the Grand Prairie Stadium of 15,000 places in Grand Prairie (Texas) and the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium of 34,000 seats in East Meadow (New York State).
If this last stadium – modular – was partly dismantled at the end of the competition, a resurgence with a view to the 2028 Olympics cannot be ruled out, not to mention the possible development of a stadium near New York at the initiative of the local franchise of the Major League Cricket.
Beyond the advantage of being able to have existing sites – with a possible adaptation of the gauge – LA 2028 would then aim to offer maximum visibility given the impact of the time difference with India, country where cricket represents an unparalleled sporting, economic and television windfall.
As proof, unlike the 12.5 hour time difference between Los Angeles and New Delhi, the American East Coast would bring India closer at 9.30am. A gain of a few hours which would be anything but anecdotal.
In India, cricket attracts crowds to stadiums and generates massive television audiences. A boon for LA 2028 and for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) which could here seek to maximize commercial potential and shine the spotlight on the Games like never before.
Moreover, while the broadcasting rights for the 2024 Games were awarded in India for 15.6 million pounds sterling (18.21 million euros) according to the British daily « The Guardian »the entry of cricket into the 2028 Olympics – and potentially its retention for the Brisbane 2032 edition – could lead to a spectacular increase in said rights to the tune of 150 million pounds, or 175.05 million euros.
For the moment, nothing has been decided yet.
Discussions will continue internally and with the International Cricket Council (ICC) as well as the IOC, before deciding on the best plan to put cricket in the spotlight at the 2028 Games.
Other sports are also waiting for their drop-off pointincluding all additional sports, with the exception of the aforementioned softball.
In recent months, LA 2028 has in any case already revised part of its initial mapping to focus in particular on spectacular high-stakes venues across Southern California.
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