Abu Dhabi government takes control of T10 cricket competition, plans to take it global

Abu Dhabi has moved to put one of cricket’s fastest-growing formats firmly under state control — and the ambition stretches well beyond the UAE. Abu Dhabi Cricket & Sports Hub, the emirate’s government-backed sports body, assumed majority ownership and full commercial control of the Abu Dhabi T10 league, transforming a competition that began as a private venture into a nationally managed sporting asset, according to a statement.

The Abu Dhabi Sports Council and the Emirates Cricket Board are backing the new structure — a clean sweep of institutional firepower behind what was, until recently, a privately held tournament launched in 2017 by entrepreneur Shaji Ul Mulk.

The move is being framed publicly around governance and financial transparency, and the language is deliberate. The league has faced questions over financial reliability in previous seasons. Matt Boucher, the competition's CEO, has been explicit that restoring franchise confidence is central to the restructuring, citing “long-term stability for teams” as one of the competition’s key priorities in an interview with Reuters.

It’s also now planning to go global, with the government aiming to reposition T10 as a global franchise product. Eight team slots will go to market through a formal invitation to tender process, with international ownership groups actively being courted, Boucher told the newswire.

There’s already an economic case: The 2025 edition generated USD 512 mn in media value, according to independent measurement firm GSIQ. For a ten-over format that completes a match in roughly 90 minutes, that number represents a compelling pitch to sponsors and broadcasters chasing younger, attention-scarce audiences.

Why cricket?

Cricket is big in the UAE. Indians and Pakistanis together account for roughly 50% of the UAE's total population. That gives the UAE a built-in audience for the T10 and a captive fanbase that most emerging sports leagues would spend years trying to manufacture, making the Emirates one of the few markets outside South Asia where cricket commands mass-market commercial weight.

“South Asian diaspora communities across the world are driving demand for cricket in various formats,” Simon Chadwick, a professor of sports specializing in the MENA region, East/South Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Europe, tells EnterpriseAM. The proof of concept arrived in 2024 when the T20 World Cup was held in the US — driven in large part by the influence of Indian expats in the tech industry.

Cricket's inclusion as an Olympic sport from the 2028 Los Angeles Games adds another layer to the investment case. Chadwick argues it could be transformative: “Countries like the United States and China are really committed to [securing] gold medals in every sport that is part of the Olympic Games.” A sport that today draws a relatively defined global audience could, within a few years, be chased by two of the world's largest economies.

“This is potentially a play by Abu Dhabi to invest in a sport that has a growing global presence, and that can be delivered in really accessible formats digitally and through social media,” he explains, referring to T10’s shorter format when compared to classic cricket structures like test matches.

Then there is the scale of the addressable market. India is now the world's most populous nation and, by most forecasts, on course to be among its two largest economies by 2050 alongside China. “There are 1.6 bn people just around the corner who are cricket obsessed,” Chadwick notes — a readily available market that no other sport format is better positioned to reach from the Gulf.

The UAE also benefits from a structural role it has quietly built over the past decade: serving as a neutral venue for India-Pakistan cricket, two nations whose political tensions have made bilateral series on home soil increasingly difficult to stage. “It is almost as though Dubai and the UAE have become a default home for Pakistani and Indian cricket to take place,” Chadwick said. That, combined with the International Cricket Council’s relocation of its headquarters from London to Dubai, gives the UAE institutional weight when it comes to the sport.

The takeover also fits neatly into an already well-established Abu Dhabi playbook

Abu Dhabi has methodically built out its sports infrastructure — from Formula 1 to UFC to golf — and leveraged sports for tourism revenue as part of its economic diversification strategy. Bringing the T10 in-house formally folds cricket into that ecosystem, with the institutional weight (and the benefit of having a strong local network and solid demand on-ground) to pursue international broadcast contracts, attract marquee franchise owners and potentially expand the format beyond UAE borders.

Chadwick points to a more specific competitive logic at work. Gulf states, he argues, are deliberately targeting sports that are “commercially immature assets with a global footprint” — where the barriers to entry are lower and the upside is greater than in mature markets like European football.

Abu Dhabi also has a structural advantage its rivals lack: an established franchise model it has already made work at a global scale. The City Football Group — majority owned by Abu Dhabi's Sheikh Mansour — operates a network of football clubs across multiple continents under a single commercial umbrella. “You could imagine replicating that model and having cricket franchises across the world,” Chadwick says.

Abu Dhabi’s playbook has also historically seen it arrange global coalitions for its sports investments. “What we're not seeing is Gulf states on their own making major investments in risky sports properties,” he explains. “What they're doing is creating global coalitions of investors from elsewhere in the world,” he adds, pointing to how Abu Dhabi's ownership of Manchester City sits alongside investment from Silver Lake, the Silicon Valley private equity firm, and China Media Capital. The same co-investment model is likely to shape how T10 franchise agreements are structured.

The credibility question

Despite T10’s appeal to digitally oriented audiences, T10 and T20 are still not prominent formats in the minds of many cricket fans. And state backing does not automatically resolve the T10's credibility gap, Chadwick says.

One issue is what Chadwick calls “format fatigue.” “There is so much cricket that people simply don't have the time to watch it,” he said. “Instead of having a huge market for cricket, what you’re actually getting is a series of niches that perhaps don’t deliver the commercial returns that many people anticipated.” For a format still working to be taken seriously alongside Test cricket and the IPL, that fragmentation of the global audience is a live risk.

There is also a basic accessibility challenge. Unlike football, where participation requires only a ball, cricket demands equipment and infrastructure — a barrier that limits grassroots growth in emerging markets. “For many people globally, this is a new sport,” Chadwick says, “and the rules are a little difficult to understand.”

What to watch

Attracting international franchisers is less about having state vs. private ownership and more about whether the new structure can demonstrate trustworthiness and legitimacy over time, Chadwick notes. “Both systems of governance — whether state or private funding — have advantages and disadvantages,” he says. What matters more is consistency, coherence, and stability: “It's those two things — trustworthiness and legitimacy — that are ultimately going to give people and organizations the confidence in the series you’re running.” That, he argues, is what will determine whether global sponsors and franchise investors commit — not who holds the majority stake.

What we’re tracking: Other than how negotiations for international franchise agreements will unfold and which Abu Dhabi state entities will take part — with Chadwick raising the question of City Football Group’s potential involvement — we’ll be keeping an eye on the 2026 edition of T10. Running from November 7 to 20 at Zayed Cricket Stadium, this will be the first full season under the new regime, and it is being treated internally as a launchpad rather than a continuation of the status quo for the T10 competition.