American Money Has Discovered Indian Cricket

In the decade since he founded the private investment firm RedBird Capital Partners, Gerry Cardinale has acquired stakes in sports properties as varied as Fenway Sports Group, the Yankees’ YES Network and the Italian soccer team A.C. Milan. One of his partners at RedBird, Alec Scheiner, previously worked as a vice president of the N.F.L.’s Dallas Cowboys, and later ran the Cleveland Browns.

Both men, then, are quite familiar with what a billion-dollar business looks like. The sport where they see the biggest upside these days, though, might be a surprise.

“When we first started looking at cricket, we were by no means experts,” Scheiner said. “But the more we studied it, the more we realized it felt like the N.F.L. did 20 years ago.”

That was why, in June 2021, RedBird bought a 15 percent stake in Rajasthan Royals, a team that competes in the Indian Premier League, for $37.5 million. The money that has poured into the league over the past 15 months suggests that RedBird got a bargain.

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