Books are Cool Again

The song “Video killed the radio star” by Buggles was the first video to be played when the music channel MTV started broadcasting in 1981. The reference was supposed to allure to the fact that during the history of mankind new media has always overtaken old media.
During much of the 20th century, the advent of new media and entertainment channels have almost always been met with a cry of fear from bibliophiles everywhere. The book has been pronounced threatened or dead on many occasions for reasons ranging from Homo Modernicus’ frantic lifestyle to the very notion that the book itself is not flashy or cool enough, and that the book needed to reinvent itself.
Although these claims have been supported by empirical evidence of declining sales, it is surprising to see the list of the UK’s All-Time Most Selling Books, as compiled by The Guardian. It seems that books are still very relevant and entertaining. But it is not the classics that are being read. One has to go all the way down to 65th place on the list to find a book that was first published before the advent of the most entertaining medium of the 20th century: The Internet. The book in question is Harper Lee's "To kill a mockingbird".
Dan Brown tops the list with “The Da Vinci Code”, and seven of J.K. Rowling's books have made it in to the Top 10. So it should not come as too big of a surprise that no Nobel Prize winners are to be found on the list.
Though iPad’s, Kindle’s, Nook’s and other tablets have contributed to the renewed life in the publishing industry, these only account for 10% of total sales. The publishing industry will agree to the famous quote from American author, Mark Twain, that "The report of my death was an exaggeration". Unfortunately, the same can not be said for the sales of Mark Twain’s books.

Will Cricket be bigger than Baseball?

Five years ago it would have been outrageous to compare cricket and baseball. While both are bat-and-ball games played in English-speaking countries, the economics were significantly different. In 2007 the Major League Baseball (MLB) team New York Yankees generated nearly $400 million in revenue, while Sussex were able to win the English Cricket County Championship with less than 2% of that revenue.

But the balance seems to be shifting and cricket is gaining ground on baseball by becoming more Americanized. The most obvious sign of this change is, that two cricketers have entered Forbes’ list of The World’s 100 Highest-Paid Athletes. While only two MLB players (Alex Rodriguez and Joe Mauer) rank higher than Indian cricket captain, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, there are still some ways to go before cricket has closed the 11-to-1 gap on the list.

2007 was the year when the dynamic momentum and growth for these two sports started to change. It was the year where cricket’s Twenty20 format became global. Unlike cricket’s traditional five-day Test Matches, a Twenty20 game, like baseball, takes only 150 minutes. This has made it a lot more attractive to the general public. In 2007 the Board of Control for Cricket in India announced plans for a franchise-based Twenty20 league, called the Indian Premier League (IPL), starting in India the following year. The IPL received a huge boost long before its first game with India winning the inaugural International Cricket Council (ICC) Twenty20 World Cup in 2007.

The massive economic growth of India in recent years has been a major factor in the IPL’s success. The league has attracted the world’s best players, while large TV revenues and airtime has multiplied player’s earnings potential. The IPL has not just meant a growth in player’s salaries, it has also opened the door for endorsement deals. India’s captain and the world’s highest paid cricketer, Mahendra Singh Dhoni, generates 87% of his income from endorsement deals.

In a global perspective, cricket seems to be on the rise, while baseball, though more popular than ever in the US, have not been able to grow with the same speed globally. After having been an Olympic sport since 1984, baseball was left out of the 2012 London Olympics, because it was only popular on the American continent. The same does not hold true for cricket, which is played all over the world. The 10 best cricket-playing nations in the world are scattered over five different continents.

Cricket was dropped as an Olympic sport after being present at the first ever modern Olympic Games in 1896. But in 2010, the ICC became a recognized association of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). This has made it possible for cricket to follow the path of rugby, which became an Olympic sport at London 2012 with a revamped format. And in true Hollywood style it would only be fitting for a game called Twenty20, to be included in the 2020 Olympics.