Bad weather has marred construction in Dallas and the ticketing issues threaten to cast an even longer shadow.
Cameron Ponsonby
Well, at least the immigration officials knew that the T20 World Cup 2024 was going to take place.
The city of Dallas isn’t overflowing with cricket fans excited about the big show: Uber drivers don’t know it’s happening, billboards advertise FC Dallas vs LA Galaxy instead of Nepal vs Holland, and the USA vs Canada opening game hasn’t been sold out. The stadium has a capacity of 7,000.
When this happens, it sends you straight into the “what are we doing here?” zone. Why is the 2024 premier cricket event kicking off in Dallas in front of an as-yet-unknown number of spectators rather than somewhere else?
It’s a good question, and one that doesn’t immediately come to mind as you watch the outfield at Grande Prairie Stadium get soaked as another thunderstorm rolls through.
A series of worrying developments are emerging in the run up to the launch day. Things beyond the organisers’ control will not go their way, and things within their control will not go their way either. There have been flood warnings and thunderstorms all week. A few days ago, a big screen was blown over by strong winds. The back side where the media tent is set up is almost completely covered in mud.
You can’t control that. It’s sad when Saturday comes and there’s a thunderstorm. But that’s life.
But ticket sales are a mess. As of two months ago, tickets for the opening games in the U.S. and Canada were not available for general sale. You might think they were sold out, but you’d be wrong.
Hopes of a sellout were replaced by an announcement that availability was “limited,” and the reality became clear in a press statement from USA Cricket on Wednesday. The promotion, billed as a “limited ticket sale,” allows USA Cricket members to purchase up to six tickets to the year’s must-see event at a 25% discount. Get your hotcakes here: If you agree to go to the USA vs. Canada match, you’ll get 20 tickets free.
“Cricket cannot lament the concentration of funding in the ‘Big Three’ and worry about the health of the sport outside those countries while laughing at the idea of the US taking on the sport.”
The ICC has not released ticket sales figures but said on Saturday that “sales have been strong and we are optimistic about attendance,” and that the plan all along had been to reserve tickets until four days before the event for United States Cricket Association members to purchase at a discount.
There are reasons to be skeptical: last year’s ODI World Cup in India faced a similar issue with empty stadiums being “sold out” early on in the tournament. This is not new, and the way such events are promoted and tickets are sold deserves scrutiny.
Furthermore, the current World Cup ticket sales contradict previous statements from the ICC, including from tournament director Fawaz Bakhsh, who said: USA Today In February it was announced that there were “too many applications” for the fight in the United States.
“It’s an unfortunate reality that not everyone who applies for a ticket will get one,” Baksh said at the time. “I wish everyone could get a ticket, but that’s just not possible.”
The loophole the ICC is giving itself here, as Bakhsh himself later said in the same interview, is that more tickets could become available if sponsors put some of their tickets back into the pool.
That’s a fact asserted by the ICC following its announcement on Saturday, in which it put on sale additional tickets for seven matches that were previously listed as “sold out” – all of which took place in the United States and for which “general admission places had already been exhausted.” Tickets were oversubscribed but are now readily available. If you were hoping to go to the World Cup a few months ago but missed out on tickets and your plans don’t allow you to go next week, well, you’re out of luck.
It’s mind-bogglingly frustrating, because underneath all of this there’s a fundamental truth: trying to grow soccer in America is a good thing, and soccer can’t, on the one hand, lament the concentration of funding in the “Big Three” and worry about the health of soccer outside of those countries, and on the other, laugh at the idea of a country like America giving it a shot.
“When you turn on the TV and see the stands are empty, many people might think, ‘Of course there’s no one there. Cricket isn’t popular in America.’ But that’s not true. Here, especially in Dallas, there is a genuine passion and interest in cricket.
For cricket websites and broadcasters, the US ranks high in viewership because 4.5 million South Asian immigrants live in the US. The challenge facing US officials is translating that attention into seating capacity because the domestic fan base is thin. 4.5 million is a lot, but when spread across a country the size of a continent, it’s not that many.
This is a reasonable excuse for why we can’t expect the World Cup to resonate with the American public, but it’s not valid if they can’t pack out Grande Prairie for the opening match of the ICC tournament.
There are over 200 club games played every week in the Dallas area, which means there are over 2,000 people playing the sport within driving distance of the stadium, and if there are over 2,000 people in the area who want to play the sport, there must be 7,000 who want to watch.
If that happens, they will be coming to a fantastic stadium to open the tournament.
“It’s an amazing facility,” said Canada captain Saad Bin Zafar. “We played our first training match here and it was awesome. It was every player’s dream to play for Canada in the World Cup.”
With a beautiful outfield, a decent pitch and a brand new outdoor training block at the back, this facility is unanimously popular with players, and if you’re a fan, there are great viewing points all along the way, food and drink is readily available, easy car access and plenty of parking – it’s a fantastic place to watch cricket.
But as the saying goes, if you build it, people may not come.
Cameron Ponsonby is a freelance cricket writer based in London. @cameronponsonby
