The Oakland Stadium can accommodate 56,000 spectators © Getty Major League Cricket (MLC) has announced grand plans to kick off their 3rd season from the Coliseum stadium in Oakland, California from June 12. The sporting arena, located around a 20 minute drive from San Francisco, was previously home to NFL’s Oakland Raiders as well as MLB’s Oakland Athletics. The 56,000 seater stadium is set to host nine games between June 12 and June 19 before the 34 game MLC caravan moves to Dallas’ Grand Prairie Stadium and later to the Broward County Stadium near Miami. The Coliseum will become the second venue of its kind that MLC has secured as a home ground for one of its franchises. However unlike Grand Prairie Stadium in Texas where it required considerable capital investments to repurpose the original baseball facility to cricket, the Coliseum will not require a revamp to accommodate cricket due to its broader field dimensions. MLC confirmed adherence to ICC guidelines for boundary requirements with the smallest boundary being 56 metres. Bringing cricket to a major, mainstream American stadium like the Coliseum could serve as a significant boost for the sport in the U.S., particularly in California. However, MLC has confirmed that the current agreement is only for one year. A decision on extending the arrangement into a long-term partnership will depend on how well this season demonstrates a viable proof of concept-both in terms of cricket’s compatibility with the venue and whether the stadium’s ownership sees cricket as a sustainable, long-term fixture. “We have an obligation to find a home here in the Bay Area, and for the moment, that is the Coliseum. But we eventually hope that we can either take over the Coliseum or we will obviously have to look for a long term home somewhere else. We’ve been talking to Santa Clara fairgrounds. We’ve been talking to Sunnyvale. We’ll be talking to a number of different locations, and we’ll continue to do so across the Bay Area, until we find our home” said David White, CEO of the San Francisco Unicorns. The MLC will undertake the ordeal of transporting two practice wickets that were installed at last year’s temporary T20 World Cup venue near New York to the West Coast in California. The shipment and subsequent installation at Coliseum is expected to cost MLC over half a million USD. The overall costs of bringing cricket to the Coliseum are expected to be to the tune of USD 3 million. White views that additional cost as an investment to engage with more cricket fans in the Bay area. It will be the Unicorns’ first shot to bring cricket to their home base and the franchise has stated its plans to employ a ‘big brand’ as it’s community partner to facilitate events focusing on community engagement. “We successfully hosted our family day, which is the last Sunday before our first game of the season with over 1500 fans. We intend on doing it this year too. There’s one particularly big, big brand that’s coming on as one of our community partners that we will be announcing next week. It’s about, how do we engage, or how do we work with them to enhance the consumer and the fan experience. We’d love to have some unique San Francisco Bay Area components surrounding the overall fan experience” added White.
