“WE WANT TO BE ONE OF THE TOP SPORTING ORGANISATIONS IN THE WORLD” Rajasthan Royals’ Jake Lush McCrum shares an insight into his journey to become Chief Executive of the Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise, what makes the league so successful and the unique challenges the role brings. In July 2021, Indian Premier League (IPL) franchise Rajasthan Royals promoted 29-year-old Leeds University graduate Jake Lush-McCrum to the role of chief executive.
Lush McCrum has been with the Rajasthan Royals since 2018 and has played a crucial role in overseeing the franchise’s growth and participation in the biggest most commercialised professional cricket league in the world, achieving particular success in the digital transformation of the business. He is now focused on building a worldclass management team to execute the expansive vision that he and the board have set out. This vision has a core aim of transforming society through cricket, and cricket though innovation. What were your aspirations when you left University? It feels like a long time ago for me now, but I certainly wasn’t thinking about going into the sports industry when I left Leeds [University]. I was focused more on the investment space. I studied abroad at US Amherst in my third year, and I did do more sports marketing and entrepreneurship and worked with the likes of Coca-Cola and
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other sports teams which was really interesting. However, for me going straight into the sports industry in the UK didn’t seem likely as the roles were very specified and I wanted a broader more strategic role and so if I had gone in straight away it would have been a digital, sales, marketing role or equivalent. I wanted to learn about different business models, work with different companies and look at different career paths. Hence, I went more into the investment space. I’ve always been passionate about sports and would talk to friends and family, saying I would love to be in that industry, I just didn’t see a way in straight
out of university. But then progressing through when I joined Blenheim Chalcot, I moved into the investment arm advising for five of them. Having Rajasthan Royals there, it was banned at the time for those two years, so it wasn’t active however knowing it was part of the portfolio was really exciting. As it was looking to relaunch I started to become more involved with that just from a UK perspective and then as we were working late one evening the owner of Rajasthan Royals came up to me and asked if I wanted to go to India and relaunch the Royals with the Ranjit [Barthakur] – the chairman – and bring across Blenheim Chalcot and UK/US process, learnings and strategy for a successful relaunch in 2018. Soon after that I went out to India and the rest is history. It was a five-month project which went well, and I thoroughly enjoyed India, which was an extremely intense learning experience. I think I learnt more in those five months than in the previous five years in the UK. It was incredible and with Ranjit pushing me into different areas in the business. It meant I was working with the digital team for a few months, then sponsorship, then I was in merchandising having to deal with Indian ➡
RAJASTHAN ROYALS
RAJASTHAN ROYALS
