Cricket’s Olympic Return Runs Through a Single Indian Broadcaster

Cricket returns to the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028, its first appearance since 1900, chasing a fan base of more than two billion people concentrated in India. The broadcaster best positioned to cash in already owns the Indian Premier League and the last two Olympic broadcasts in that market. It is JioStar, the media company controlled by Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries and Walt Disney.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) describes cricket’s inclusion as a rare shot at markets it has never cracked. JioStar, and the family that runs it, already sits inside almost every door that decision opens.

Cricket’s 128-Year Detour Ends in a Six-Team Sprint

Cricket played once at the Olympics, in Paris in 1900, then vanished from the program for well over a century. The comeback took two decades to build.

The IOC gave cricket provisional recognition in 2007. It formally recognized the International Cricket Council (ICC, the sport’s global governing body) in 2010. Reforms to the Olympic Agenda in 2014 let host cities propose their own additional sports, opening a door Los Angeles eventually walked through for 2028.

1. 1900: Cricket appears at the Olympics for the first and, until now, only time.
2. 2007: The IOC grants cricket provisional recognition.
3. 2010: The IOC formally recognizes the ICC as cricket’s governing body.
4. 2014: Olympic Agenda reforms let host cities add sports of their own choosing.
5. 2028: Cricket returns at the Los Angeles Games, 128 years after its debut.

IOC Sports Director Pierre Ducrey called it a slow alignment of interests. “The interests of some of the federations, the interests of the Olympic movement at large, sometimes converge, sometimes they don’t,” he told Reuters. “So a long journey, but I would say one that was consistently getting our movements and our sports, and our interests closer and closer.”

Ducrey was blunt about why cricket, and why now. Cricket is strong in markets the Olympics has struggled to reach, he said, and the Games need exactly that.

It’s a win-win compromise where we’ll give them more opportunities, and they will definitely strengthen our appeal in markets that are very strongly interested in cricket and sometimes mostly in cricket.

Ducrey said that to Reuters, describing cricket’s Olympic return.

Five Regions, One Wildcard and India’s Head Start

LA28 will field six teams each in the men’s and women’s T20 tournaments, with squads capped at 15 players, for a total of 180 athletes. The ICC and IOC confirmed the six-team qualification format with guaranteed representation from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Americas, a pathway this site has mapped out in detail before.

Five of the twelve total berths go to the top-ranked eligible team from each region. The sixth, in both the men’s and women’s brackets, goes through a dedicated ICC Olympics Qualifier in 2027.

India’s women are already through. Their men are not mathematically locked in, but they are close. India retained their No. 1 spot in the T20I rankings in mid-2026, ahead of England and Australia, having won the last two Men’s T20 World Cups, in 2024 and 2026, under captain Suryakumar Yadav. They stayed unbeaten in every bilateral series between those two titles.

The Broadcast Number Nobody Will Confirm Yet

Money is already moving before the qualification picture is complete. The Paris 2024 broadcast contract for the Indian subcontinent was worth an estimated $30 million. IOC Television and Marketing Services Managing Director Anne-Sophie Voumard told Indian media late last year that LA28 would fetch “a multiple” of that figure, without naming a number.

An IOC spokesperson told Reuters the interest is real. “We are currently engaged in constructive discussions with a number of key players across the region,” the spokesperson said, adding there has been “strong interest from the market, reflecting both the momentum behind the LA28 Olympic Games and the addition of cricket to the sports programme.”

• $30 million: the reported value of the Paris 2024 broadcast rights for the Indian subcontinent.
• A multiple: how the IOC’s own marketing chief describes the expected LA28 figure, with no number attached.
• $20 billion: the IPL’s estimated overall value heading into its 2026 season.
• 1.2 billion: viewers the IPL’s 2026 season drew across television and streaming.

Set against the IPL’s own numbers, even a generous multiple of $30 million looks modest. That gap is exactly why the broadcaster holding both properties matters so much.

Who Already Owns the Cricket Broadcast Pipes?

One company already holds the Indian rights to the Olympics, the IPL and most of the sport India watches. JioStar was formed in 2024 when Reliance and Disney completed their media joint venture, valued at roughly $8.5 billion, with Reliance holding 56 percent, Disney 37 percent and Bodhi Tree Systems the remaining 7 percent.

The new company’s sports portfolio is enormous:

• The Indian Premier League, cricket’s richest domestic competition
• ICC events, including past and future World Cups
• Olympic broadcast rights through Paris 2024 and Milan Cortina 2026
• The English Premier League and Wimbledon
• Pro Kabaddi League and the Indian Super League

India’s Competition Commission scrutinized the merger specifically over sports broadcasting concentration and cleared it only on conditions, barring JioStar from bundling advertising slots across IPL, ICC and BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India, the sport’s domestic governing body) events. For the year ending March 31, 2026, JioStar reported operating revenue of Rs 31,048 crore, roughly $3.7 billion, alongside a net profit of Rs 3,210 crore and EBITDA of Rs 4,885 crore.

That does not guarantee JioStar wins the LA28 India rights outright; the IOC says the deal is still open. But no rival bidder walks in holding the IPL, the last two Olympics and the regulatory scar tissue of already being told to rein in its market power.

The Family Seat and the Career Path

Two people connect the Ambani family directly to the institutions deciding cricket’s Olympic future. Nita Ambani, Mukesh Ambani’s wife, is an IOC member and hosted the IOC’s 2023 session in Mumbai, the meeting where cricket’s Olympic bid gathered momentum.

The ICC’s own chief executive has an equally direct line to JioStar. Sanjog Gupta started as a journalist before joining Star India in 2010, rose to Head of Sports at Disney and Star India in 2020, then was named the ICC’s seventh chief executive in July 2025, arriving directly from running JioStar’s sports and live experiences business.

Gupta is the one making the on-field case for T20’s Olympic fit. “The jeopardy or the unpredictability that live sports benefit from is maximised in this format,” he told Reuters. Unlike five-day Tests, restricted to the ICC’s 12 full members, T20 is open far more broadly. “Avenues of participation have been expanded significantly to really position this format as cricket’s handshake with the world,” Gupta said. “It’s global, more accessible and representative.”

Every one of those Reuters quotes describes cricket’s global reach. None of them mention that the person saying it, and the woman sitting on the IOC, both built their careers or their company inside the same media group now best placed to broadcast the result.

The Rest of the Field Feels the Squeeze

Cricket’s pitch to the IOC leans hard on youth. Nearly half its followers are under 35, and 35 percent are under 27, according to Gupta, numbers he says make the sport “future-ready.” That demographic case, not just India’s population, is what sold the Olympic movement on cricket over other suitors.

Cricket’s Olympic push has not landed cleanly everywhere. The sport was recently left off the 2026 Asian Games program, even as it heads toward its Olympic return two years later, a reminder that cricket’s multi-event ambitions still run into scheduling and politics outside India.

Smaller cricket boards face a narrower path than fans might assume. Only six men’s and six women’s teams reach LA28, a fraction of the roughly two hundred nations that compete in track and field, so most of the ICC’s members will watch from outside the stadium regardless of how the broadcast deal shakes out. Cricket is expected to stay on the program well past 2028. Brisbane, itself a cricket stronghold, hosts the 2032 Games, and India is pushing Ahmedabad as a host city for 2036.

By the time the opening ceremony airs in Los Angeles, the rights to show cricket to those two billion fans will most likely run through the same company that already owns the IPL.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does the last cricket spot at the LA28 Olympics get decided?

Five of six places in each bracket go to the top-ranked eligible team from Africa, Asia, Europe, Oceania and the Americas. The sixth spot in both the men’s and women’s events is decided through a separate ICC Olympics Qualifier in 2027, with the women’s ranking window for that qualifier closing on March 1, 2027.

Which teams have already qualified for Olympic cricket at LA28?

On the women’s side, Australia, Great Britain, India and South Africa have already secured places by finishing as the top eligible team from their region at the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2026. The men’s field will not be set until ICC T20I rankings close on December 31, 2026.

Will JioStar definitely hold the LA28 broadcast rights in India?

Not yet. The IOC says it remains in discussions with several bidders and has not awarded the Indian subcontinent rights, even though JioStar already holds the Paris 2024, Milan Cortina 2026 and IPL broadcast rights in that market.

Why was T20 chosen over Test cricket for the Olympics?

T20 fits inside a three-hour broadcast window, unlike five-day Tests or eight-hour one-day internationals. It is also open to far more countries; Test cricket is restricted to the ICC’s 12 full members, while T20 competition reaches nations well beyond that list.

How does the IPL’s value compare with Olympic cricket’s broadcast numbers?

The IPL is valued at around $20 billion and drew 1.2 billion viewers across platforms in its 2026 season. That dwarfs even a generous multiple of the roughly $30 million the Paris 2024 India rights fetched, underlining how much bigger cricket’s domestic business already is than its Olympic one.

Could cricket remain in the Olympics beyond LA28?

Signs point that way. Brisbane, host of the 2032 Games, has a deep cricketing culture of its own, and India is lobbying for Ahmedabad to host the 2036 Games, which would keep the sport inside the program for a third straight cycle.