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Sports10x - What It's Like To Own A Cricket Team - Anand Rajaraman, Co-owner, San Francisco Unicorns (MLC)
· 48 min
Episode Sports10x - What It's Like To Own A Cricket Team - Anand Rajaraman, Co-owner, San Francisco Unicorns (MLC)
Anand Rajaraman is a serial entrepreneur and venture capitalist known for co-founding Junglee, which was acquired by Amazon, and Kosmix, acquired by Walmart. He was Senior Vice President at Walmart Global eCommerce and is a founding partner at Rocketship.vc.
Rajaraman is also the co-owner of the San Francisco Unicorns, a Major League Cricket team. Anand has invested early in companies like Facebook and Lyft and focuses on backing high-growth startups globally, but in this episode we will limit our conversation to owning a cricket team and maybe do another episode later to talk about Anand's entrepreneurial & investing success.
⭐ Sponsored by Podcast10x - Podcasting agency for VCs - https://podcast10x.com
San Francisco Unicorns website - https://www.sfunicorns.com/
Major League Cricket (MLC) website - https://www.majorleaguecricket.com/
Anand Rajaraman on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anandrajaraman/
In this episode, we talk about -
- Why did he decide to buy a cricket team
- The business angle of owning a sports team
- Key revenue streams for franchise cricket leagues & teams
- Leveraging data & technology in all aspects of team management
- The signing of 2 Australian legends: Pat Cummins as a player, & Shane Watson as the coach
- The emotional toll of owning a sports team
& lots more
Timestamps:
(00:00) Introduction to Anand Rajaraman and the podcast episode
(03:48) Why Anand decided to buy a cricket team in Major League Cricket (MLC)
(05:18) Choosing the San Francisco Unicorns and the reasoning behind the team name
(07:23) Parallels between business world and owning a sports team
(10:59) Applying data and analytics to team management
(13:35) Investment perspective on owning a sports team
(18:26) Revenue streams for cricket leagues and teams
(22:30) Player acquisition and salary cap details
(23:52) Player selection strategy for the team
(27:53) Discussion about Pat Cummins joining the team
(33:11) Hypothetical scenario of Indian players in MLC
(34:17) Emotional aspects of owning a sports team
(40:12) Reflections on the 2024 season and reaching the championship match
(42:43) Growth of cricket in the USA and impact of the 2023 World Cup
(45:23) Long-term vision for team ownership
(46:20) How to follow San Francisco Unicorns and Major League Cricket
For sponsorship or guest appearance requests, write to prashantchoubey3@gmail.com
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Links in the notes 4
Transcript
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