The list of teams that are scheduled to play at the Oakland Coliseum this year just got longer.
In addition to the Oakland Roots and Soul, the storied venue will soon host the best cricket players in the country to kick off the 2025 Cognizant Major League Cricket season.
“Straight off the bat, as we say in cricket. It’s very exciting,” said David White, the CEO of the San Francisco Unicorns, one of the six teams in the league. Cognizant, a technology company, is the league’s title sponsor.
The league announced Wednesday that beginning June 12, the Coliseum will host nine matches over seven days before the tournament moves to Prairie, Texas, and Broward County Stadium, in Florida, to play the remainder of the season.
Major League Cricket does not have a home-and-away stadium format. Instead, last year, teams played tournament style in Texas and North Carolina.
White said this is an exciting opportunity to bring the sport within reach for the many fans here in the Bay Area, particularly among South Asian communities. SF Unicorns fans are called the “Sparkle Army.”
“ Instead of having to wake up at 4:00 a.m. and watch it halfway around the world, they can come to a game at 7:00 p.m.and see the equivalent players play here right in the Bay Area,” White said.
Cricket is widely considered to be the second most popular sport in the world, after soccer. Over 100 million fans worldwide watched games last year, according to a press release from MLC.
While the sport has a reputation for matches that can stretch on for days, White said the type of cricket played in MLC, called T20, is much more palatable for American audiences — namely because the games are much shorter. He said he hopes games at the Coliseum grow cricket’s fanbase here in the Bay Area.
“It’s made for the U.S. market. It’s a two-and-a-half to three-hour version. There’s constant big hits, constant big catches and fielding with no mitts,” White continued. “ If we get it right, cricket can have a foothold here in the Bay Area and in the USA.”
Establishing the Coliseum as a venue that can successfully host cricket matches could raise the chances that the venue would be selected to host the sport for the Olympics in 2028, according to Matthew Atencio, Professor of Kinesiology at Cal State University East Bay and the co-director for the Center for Sport and Social Justice.
“ There will be a need for cricket-specific venues that can host events,” Atencio said. “There aren’t many of them right now, so my view is that this would position the Bay Area as a potential venue.”
Cricket is set to return to the games in 2028 for only the second time in Olympic history after a 128-year hiatus.
Atencio said the arrival of cricket at the Coliseum builds on the buzz generated by other teams like the Roots, who now call the stadium home. Last weekend, both the lower and upper deck of the stadium was nearly packed, as the team played in front of a crowd of more than 26,000 for the first game of their inaugural season, complete with a halftime performance by Too $hort and a post-game fireworks show.
“ Now we can see the rise of grassroots soccer, we can see the rise of grassroots cricket in the Bay Area emerging as really viable professional sports opportunities for people to go to,” Atencio said.
As Oakland sports fans seek to fill the emotional void left by the departure of the Warriors, Raiders and A’s, and city officials seek to generate commerce around sporting events, teams with grassroots credentials and promises to stay “rooted” like the Oakland Ballers, Roots and Soul are offering their allegiance. Cricket is now the latest sport to offer a path forward.
‘“It’s an opportunity for sports and the professional landscape to be more creative about what sports can look like,” Atencio added.
“ How can we think differently in 2025 about what sports may look like in a way that is more grounded in community, grounded in different cultures — grounded in a more grassroots vision of what sports can be even at this elite level of a professional sports.”
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