The Entertainer’s Cricket League (ECL) is one of the most unique cricketing leagues in the country at the moment. It taps into the celebrity of the arguably the most influential people on the internet. The captains of these franchises are Abhishek Malhan, Elvish Yadav, Munawar Faruqui, Sonu Sharma, Anurag Dwivedi and Harsh Beniwal. In an exclusive conversation with IANS, ECL co-founders Himanshu Chandnani and Anil Kumar speak about their project, their vision and the potential of this new league.

“Big Boss has been crucial for the growth of the social media celebrity industry so we chose Elvish, Malhan and Munawar. Harsh has been a prominent face of this industry and even done cameos in movies. Anurag and Sonu too provide a lot of variety to our group and these are just the six faces of their teams as we plan to delve into many different categories like tech, gaming and others. There will be 90 more players/creators who we select for the league,” said Himanshu. Celebrities and fan-favorites coming together is something that audiences have previously seen in the Celebrity Cricket League (CCL). Although the concept is the same, the ECL is different in some major factors.

“I have worked with the Celebrities Cricket League and watched every game live and some people did perform well but playing with a leather ball is very different and difficult compared to tennis ball cricket. I believe that the level and standard of cricket in India has increased exponentially and the CCL did not provide the level of excitement. Almost all Indians have played gully cricket with tennis balls, if we chose to hold a leather-ball tournament then some players may not be able to perform and that is why we have chosen to have this tournament as we will be selecting good creators, good players and a competitive style of game and we will try to be better than the CCL,” co-founder Anil Kumar to IANS. The creators will each lead one of the six franchises with each team further picking in the form of the draft from a vast pool of 250 popular content creators out of which 96 creators will make the final cut.

These will include popular content creators across multiple industries such as technology, finance, infotainment, education, motivation & self-help, entertainment including vloggers, gaming, fashion and lifestyle from India. “The entire community is coming together which leads to a shared community as the audience is being shared amongst one another. The players with lesser followers will also benefit hugely as they get a platform where they get to associate with top members of their field and if they perform well they could get great exposure. Harshit Rana and Rinku Singh are great examples of lesser-known players getting deserved exposure through the IPL.

We are expecting near billion people watching this league so the brands associated with the league will also benefit widely and getting lots of eyeballs is something the brand will be proud of,” added Himanshu. “The launch got close to 10,000 reels on social media, more than 60 full length videos were posted by media houses getting close to 1 million views on the videos so it’s already growing and we hope to be valued at 1000 crores by the end of the first season. We are targeting 100 crores viewers by the end of the season. When we talk about just the launch event, the number of the views in each reel already takes us to our desired target and we are only working with six influencers now.

The league will have 96 influencers and many others will be present to watch the games. We are underplaying the 100-crore target as we expect to garner much more than that,” added Anil. Influencer boxing is something that the American and British people have grown very fond of. Events on large scales take place and have seen arena’s being sold out with the number of people who file in huge numbers. Influencers like Logan Paul and Jake Paul have gotten the opportunity to clash with world beaters like Floyd Mayweather and Mike Tyson. The ultimate goal for the Entertainer’s Cricket League is to hold such events for the community on a global level.

“Our plan is to start with one season for now and then hope that we can take this internationally and try and get foreign influencers if they want to participate in our leagues. India is a country which loves content creation and cricket so we have brought the two together and will see how far we can take it. Once the first season ends, we will decide how many seasons we can have,” said Anil. “We are not just stuck to cricket, once we decide to expand, we can conduct more sporting events with more influencers. We recently held a Kabaddi event with creators as well. Whatever the audience will love, we will provide,” concluded Himanshu