New Zealand Cricket (NZC) has made history by becoming the first national governing body to directly invest in an overseas T20 league. They've partnered with Major League Cricket (MLC) to launch a new team in the competition, set to debut in 2027.

Major League Cricket (MLC) is set to expand from its current six teams to eight by 2027, with further growth planned by 2031. There’s also a possibility that one of the future franchises could be based in Canada. 

The deal has been finalized, with New Zealand Cricket (NZC) coming on board as investors alongside US-based True North Sports (TNS), which will operate one of the new MLC franchises. TNS will be led by MLC co-founders Sameer Mehta and Vijay Srinivasan. According to a statement from NZC, among the private equity backers of TNS is 49ers Enterprises, the investment arm of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.

NZC chief executive Scott Weenink emphasized the importance of exploring new revenue streams, saying it’s crucial for the sport to move beyond traditional sources of income in today’s rapidly evolving landscape. 

"We put in place a five-year strategic plan in the middle of last year and one of the things that came clearly out of that was the need to try and diversify away from a reliance on just broadcast revenue and ICC distributions," Weenink told. "New Zealand Cricket, like most member boards, is heavily reliant on those two aspects.

"At the moment, we don't have our own franchise cricket tournament. We have the Super Smash, which we own, and is seen more as a tournament to help develop Black Caps and White Ferns. And we're currently looking at what we do with that, but also part of our strategic plan was looking to diversify our revenue streams to pay for and invest in our high-performance community and pathways. One of which was looking at what we did with overseas domestic franchises."