For decades, Africa has supplied world cricket with some of its finest fast bowlers, most gifted all-rounders and most intimidating athletes. What it has not produced is a franchise cricket economy of its own. The SA20 being the only major exception.
That is the opportunity Anshul Garg believes is hiding in plain sight. When Garg and his colleagues at SriYentra Group began searching for their next business almost two-and-a-half years ago, they were not looking for another sports league. They were looking for industries that could survive technological disruption.
Artificial intelligence was changing software, finance and media at breathtaking speed. Sports, education and healthcare emerged as the three sectors they believed would continue to rely on something technology could not easily replace- the human experience.
Cricket soon became the most ambitious of those bets. Not in India, where the market is already crowded, but in Africa, where Garg believes cricket is approaching an economic inflection point similar to the one India experienced years ago.
The result is the East and Southern Africa T20 Premier League (ESA T20), a franchise competition spanning Zambia, Rwanda and Malawi that hopes to arrive just before the 2027 ICC Men’s ODI World Cup, jointly hosted by South Africa, Zimbabwe and Namibia.
For Garg, however, the league is not simply about organising another cricket tournament.
“The platform that we are building is a cricket tourism business circuit,” he told financialexpress.com. His argument begins with a simple observation.
India dominates world cricket commercially. Africa, meanwhile, is becoming one of the world’s most strategically important economic regions. Between those two realities lies an opportunity that, he believes, has largely gone unnoticed.
“We were very convinced that Africa would become an increasingly important part of the global supply chain,” Garg said. “At the same time, cricket is already among the leading sports across several African countries. There is a significant Indian diaspora, a young population and, with the World Cup coming in 2027, the momentum is only going to increase.”
Rather than viewing the tournament as an isolated sporting event, Garg sees it as the catalyst for a much larger sports economy. “If a World Cup is happening in a continent, it lifts everything around it,” he said.
More than a tournament
Much of the conversation around African cricket has traditionally focused on talent. South Africa has produced generations of elite cricketers. Zimbabwe has a rich cricketing history. Namibia continues to grow as an Associate nation, while countries such as Uganda, Tanzania, Kenya, Rwanda and Nigeria are steadily expanding participation.
Garg believes the next stage of that story is commercial rather than sporting. Instead of asking whether Africa can produce more international players, he is asking whether it can support an international sports business.
“The opportunity is not just sporting talent,” he said. “It is business. It is tourism. It is creating an ecosystem around cricket.” That ecosystem forms the foundation of ESA T20’s business model.
Rather than positioning itself purely as a domestic competition, the league hopes to attract franchise owners, sponsors, broadcasters and travelling supporters into a wider regional experience. The matches become one part of the product. The destinations become another.
Betting on demographics
One reason SriYentra believes the model can work is Africa’s demographics. The continent has one of the youngest populations in the world, with mobile-first consumers increasingly driving digital entertainment.
For broadcasters, Garg argues, those fundamentals matter more than anything else.
“Broadcasters ultimately want audiences,” he said. “There is already significant sports consumption across Africa whenever major global events take place.”
His confidence also comes from extensive on-ground research. The company says it has spent months travelling across multiple African countries, studying stadium infrastructure, fan behaviour and tourism patterns before finalising its plans.
One conclusion stood out. Unlike markets where attracting spectators has become increasingly expensive, Garg believes African venues possess a natural advantage.
“People come for the experience,” he said. “Good food, music, entertainment and cricket together create an attractive proposition.”
The league also plans to invest heavily in broadcast quality, believing production values will determine whether international audiences engage with the competition. Its tender documents call for 27-camera coverage and 4K production standards from the opening season.
The ambition is to ensure viewers experience Africa not simply as a cricket venue, but as a destination.
A mobile-first audience
Perhaps the biggest difference between ESA T20 and many traditional cricket competitions lies in how it expects audiences to consume the product. Television remains important. Digital, however, sits at the centre of the strategy.
Garg says much of Africa’s sports content is consumed through mobile devices, encouraging the league to build a distribution model that extends beyond conventional broadcasting. Alongside television partnerships, organisers are exploring YouTube, gaming platforms and mobile-first streaming to reach younger audiences.
The internal target is deliberately conservative, he says.
“We believe around 30 million viewers in the first season is achievable,” Garg said. “The World Cup should then significantly accelerate those numbers.”
Why Africa changes the economics
If Garg sounds unusually confident about profitability, it is because his financial assumptions begin from an entirely different cost structure.
The company projects first-season revenues of around $18.5 million while expecting operating and capital expenditure to remain between $10 million and $12 million. Unlike many emerging leagues that spend years absorbing losses before establishing commercial stability, ESA T20 expects to generate a surplus from its opening season.
Garg attributes much of that to Africa’s operating environment. Existing international-standard stadiums reduce infrastructure spending. Lower operational costs improve margins. Franchise sales provide early capital before media rights and sponsorship revenues mature.
“I haven’t even factored sponsorship, media rights or merchandise into those calculations,” he said. “Our first-year assumptions are based largely on franchise revenues.”
That approach reflects a broader investment philosophy. Rather than chasing rapid expansion, SriYentra is attempting to build a commercially sustainable league before scaling further.
Selling Africa to corporate India
The commercial opportunity extends beyond cricket itself. Several Indian companies already view Africa as an increasingly important growth market across infrastructure, telecommunications, manufacturing and mining.
ESA T20 hopes cricket becomes another bridge connecting those relationships.
“A lot of Indian businesses already have ambitions in Africa,” Garg said. “They are looking for credible platforms through which they can engage.”
Sponsors, he argues, are not simply buying advertising inventory. They are buying access to markets. That proposition becomes even stronger with the ODI World Cup approaching.
According to Garg, several companies already planning World Cup campaigns have expressed interest in the league because it offers an earlier entry point into African cricket audiences. “The World Cup helps us, and we help build momentum towards the World Cup,” he said.
Building a regional player economy
The player model also reflects the league’s regional ambitions. Each franchise will field a 20-member squad. Nine players will come from ICC Associate nations, nine from established cricketing countries, while two places have been reserved for emerging talent identified through scouting.
Rather than concentrating solely on established international stars, organisers hope the competition becomes a pathway for African cricketers who have traditionally had fewer professional opportunities.
Several regional tournaments are already feeding into that scouting network, while former ICC Africa Regional Development Manager Kuben Pillay has been brought in to oversee player identification and competition planning. For Garg, developing talent is inseparable from developing business.
A stronger talent pool raises the standard of competition, giving broadcasters a better product to sell and sponsors a more compelling property to back. Over time, that creates the commercial foundation on which the league hopes to grow.
A different way of looking at Africa
For many sports investors, Africa still represents an emerging market. For SriYentra, it represents an underpriced one. The company’s thesis rests less on predicting cricket’s future than recognising broader economic shifts already underway.
Africa’s growing middle class, expanding digital connectivity, increasing tourism ambitions and the arrival of one of cricket’s biggest global events have, in its view, created unusually favourable conditions for long-term investment. Whether ESA T20 fulfils those ambitions remains to be seen.
Launching a new sports league has rarely been easy. Building loyal audiences, securing broadcasters and maintaining franchise economics will require years rather than months.
Yet perhaps the most revealing part of Garg’s argument has little to do with cricket itself. He speaks less about matches than ecosystems. Less about tournaments than business corridors and there is hardly any mention of scorecards.
For decades, Africa has largely been viewed as a place where cricket is played. ESA T20 is asking whether it can also become a place where cricket businesses are built. And with the 2027 World Cup moving steadily closer, its founders believe that question is arriving at exactly the right moment.