Meet the 33-year-old British former IPL boss changing Indian basketball
Ahead of the launch of the Indian Basketball League, City PM sat down with the 33-year-old Brit tasked with taking on cricket and kabaddi
Jake Lush McCrum is not your run-of-the-mill sports executive. Despite being just 33, the Brit is nearly a decade into senior leadership in sport. But he hasn’t worked his way up through the National League or taken the reins in a cushy local gig; instead he helped relaunch the IPL’s Rajasthan Royals franchise and has now jumped ship to head up the inaugural Indian Basketball League.
With a planned launch in 2027 and set to involve six franchises, rising to 10 within a few years of the first tip-off, McCrum believes the IBL is getting going in what is a huge year for the sport – a European NBA spin-off is slated to get moving next autumn while the EuroLeague is itself looking to franchise. And then there is the India factor.
“The pure macros around basketball in India are pretty incredible,” McCrum tells City PM. “It has the third highest playing population in the world – 55m people play basketball in India. Only China and the US are ahead of it and I don’t think anyone around the world would probably know that; 100m people engage around the sport.”
McCrum cites the popularity of the sport in the country’s private schools; that youth level basketball has a healthy gender split; and that its audience is affluent and akin to the profile of an Indian fan that watches the Premier League.
Basketball in India
So what is the Indian Basketball League proposition? Six franchises, rising to 10, with a similar start-up model to English cricket’s The Hundred – where all teams are owned centrally before being sold off in year three. McCrum believes the sales won’t match The Hundred in their value, stating that “the Indian market is going to be lower, because the spending power of your consumers is different” but is keen to mention that, despite not being for sale, the teams have been the subject to 30 takeover bids from both domestic and international organisations. He says there’s interest from Bollywood too.
“It is more domestic because more are hearing about it domestically before the launch,” the Brit adds. “But you’ve got private equity, family offices and consumer-facing brands. You’ve got a really nice mix.”
The Rajasthan Royals – who won the first edition of the IPL in 2008 and were this year purchased in a deal worth £1.4bn that saw potential Liverpool investors the Mittal family swoop for a 75 per cent stake – would have been one almighty proving ground for someone with little knowledge of the intricacies of Indian sport and governance.
“Being a British guy over here who’s lived here for eight years,” says McCrum, whose great, great grandfather invented football’s penalty kick, “I think my mentality is always, ‘I am not the fan’.
“I do not interact with the fans naturally on a daily basis. I have to really proactively go and spend time speaking to these people across every state in the country.”
Cricket and new markets
Whether basketball can surpass the likes of kabaddi and IPL cricket as a sport India dominates remains to be seen. But the evidence suggests that there’s a young generation of fans looking for something new to watch.
McCrum says Indian fan habits are seeing them turn off longer formats, and that opens the door for basketball.
Whether he can pull off a second Indian sporting resurgence inside a decade remains to be seen, but the foundations appear to be set. And McCrum could unleash a sporting behemoth.