Major League Cricket (MLC 2025)

The Major League Cricket (MLC) is a professional T20 cricket league based in the United States. The competition is sanctioned by the USA Cricket and is organized by the American Cricket Enterprises (ACE). The tournament was founded in 2023 and is fast becoming one of the most popular T20 leagues in the game. Six city-based teams, owned by individual group of investors, participate in the tournament.

In November 2022, MLC announced that the inaugural season of the tournament will be played in July 2023 at Grand Prairie Stadium. The format of the tournament is a single round-robin followed by playoffs and the final.

The franchises acquire players through the player draft. The inaugural player draft was held on March 19, 2023 at the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston. Each team had a purse of over $1 million, with $800,000 for overseas players and $300,000 for US-based players.

The overseas players were signed directly and not through the draft. Each team is allowed to have a minimum of 15 players and maximum of 18 players. A team is allowed to a sign a maximum of nine overseas players.

Major League Cricket - Teams:

Six teams have been participating in the MLC since the inaugural season. The six teams are based in Dallas, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, and Washington D.C. Out of the six teams, three teams are owned by IPL team owners - Mumbai Indians, Kolkata Knight Riders and Chennai Super Kings.

On the other hand, Delhi Capitals have ties with Seattle Orcas while San Francisco and Washington have ties with Australian domestic teams - Cricket Victoria and Cricket NSW respectively.

MLC Team List:

Team	City	Owners
Los Angeles Knight Riders	Los Angeles, California	Knight Riders Group
MI New York	New York City	Indiawin Sports
San Francisco Unicorns	San Francisco, California	Anand Rajaraman, Venky Harinarayan
Seattle Orcas	Seattle, Washington	GMR Group, S. Somasegar, Satya Nadella
Texas Super Kings	Dallas	Chennai Super Kings, Anurag Jain, Ross Perot Jr.
Washington Freedom	Washington, D.C.	Sanjay Govil

Major League Cricket - Seasons:

The first season of the MCL was played in 2023. Seattle Orcas, Texas Super Kings, Washington Freedom and MI New York qualified for the playoffs. In the final, MI New York beat Seattle Orcas by 7 wickets to win the inaugural MLC season.

In the second season, Washington Freedom, San Francisco Unicorns, Texas Super Kings and MI New York qualified for the playoffs. Washington Freedom went on to win the tournament with a win over Seattle Orcas.