Satya Nadella, Vijay Shekhar Sharma roped in as angel investors in USA T20 League: Report

The upcoming Major League Cricket (MLC), USA's first professional T20 league, is already drawing top names from across the world.

After Bollywood megastar Shah Rukh Khan acquired the Los Angeles franchise — now known as the LA Knight Riders — last week, top Indian and Indian-origin CEOs are also said to be associating with the T20 league.

Cricbuzz reported that PaytmVijay Shekhar Sharma, Microsoft's Satya Nadella, and Adobe's Shantanu Narayen have been roped in as early stage investors in MLC.

While no official word is out yet, these investments were reportedly made in American Cricket Enterprises (ACE), the holding company of the USA T20 league, in the last quarter of 2019.

"All three of them have invested their individual stakes at the MLC entity level and currently do not hold allegiances or interests in any of the city-based franchises," Cricbuzz stated.

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The total investment in the inaugural edition of MLC is estimated to be about $90-100 million. A chunk of it has come from "high-profile investors" that include Silicon Valley heavyweights and tech millionaires in the US.

The final list of MLC investors will be released this week, as per reports.

Interestingly, MicrosoftCEO Nadella has been associated with sports in the past too. He holds a partial stake in Seattle-based soccer club Seattle Sounders FC. He's also an avid sports fan, and has represented his alma mater (Hyderabad Public School) in cricket.

VSS, on the other hand, has long been associated with Indian cricket through Paytm. The country's most valuable unicorn owns the title sponsorship rights to all BCCI cricket matches, and is also the umpire partner in the Indian Premier League (IPL) — the world's richest cricket league and a definite inspiration for MLC.

MLC gets underway in 2022 with six franchises from Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Dallas, Chicago, and Washington DC. In 2021, it will begin as a development league (Minor League Cricket) with 24 franchises within the US.