Could Broward soon host a cricket World Cup? A stadium would first need upgrades
Broward commissioners will consider a request to double, if not triple, the number of spectator seats in the county’s international cricket stadium, among other upgrades, in the hopes of turning it into a “world cup”-caliber destination.
The estimated cost: $3 million.
Cricket, a bat-and-ball game, has long been common overseas, but it’s still growing among Americans.
Broward’s Central Broward Regional Park in Lauderhill, situated near West Sunrise Boulevard and State Road 7, is home to the only stadium in the United States sanctioned by the International Cricket Council. And although Lauderhill has been the site of games with international teams over the years, including India and the West Indies, Broward has its eyes on the big prize: the June 2024 World Cup Games.
It could be the first time the cricket World Cup is played in the U.S. But at least two other venues are working to get sanction approval to try to become the host, said Dan West, the county’s Parks and Recreation director.
The $3 million request by the county’s Parks and Recreation Department would be used for a new scoreboard and to build new seats to better position the county’s stadium to be chosen, he said.
“In order to host a World Cup game you have to have certain criteria that has to be anywhere in the world,” he said. “They have identified certain things they need to have.”
There are now 5,000 seats, when there could instead be 12,000, maybe even 15,000. There also needs to be a media staging area. And the scoreboard is from 2007 and has “outlived its usefulness” and getting repeated electronic repairs.
The cost will probably exceed $3 million, but it’s a start, county officials said, and reoccurring funding could make more changes.
The county’s budget hasn’t been signed off on yet — further discussions will happen this summer and approval will come in the fall — but departments will make their appeal to fund their wish lists.
If approved, the $3 million would be funded by taxpayers through property taxes in the next fiscal year, which starts in October.
Last month, a team from the ICC and Cricket West Indies “spent several days assessing the stadium and grounds, making recommendations to enhance the facilities to bring them to the standards for a World Cup,” West said.
West called more seating a “crowd pleaser.” And he’d like to see a second scoreboard as a backup, and that could eat up at least $1 million alone.
The goal: “billions” of eyeballs on those televised games, which will have video snippets of not just the stadium, but the surrounding community. And West hopes that translates to future tourism.
Former Lauderhill Mayor Richard Kaplan, who wrote a book called “Cricket, Lovely Cricket: How International Cricket Came to the United States,” turned pursuing cricket into part of his legacy. The stadium was built in November 2007, and the first international game was played May 2010, he said.
In 2012 he was inducted into the Cricket Hall of Fame in Connecticut for his efforts to bring cricket to South Florida and to build the Central Broward Regional Park cricket stadium.
Kaplan said the creation of the multi-use park “was to create an economic engine to not only Lauderhill, but Broward County, mostly on an international scale was the intention. We were trying to make this a signature place to be.”
“I applaud them for wanting to put more resources into the facility,” he said. “I met people around the world and Lauderhill is a known city in India and Sri Lanka, they’ve never heard of Fort Lauderdale but they heard of Lauderhill, because of the cricket.”
Lisa J. Huriash can be reached at lhuriash@sunsentinel.com. Follow on Twitter @LisaHuriash