A new sport is climbing the popularity ranks in the U.S., and it's one that much of the world is already obsessed with: cricket. The bat-and-ball game, rooted in the culture of many South Asian and Australasian countries, is now seeing a spike in American fans.

America's interest may have been cemented by Team USA's June 6 win over Pakistan at the Men's T20 Cricket World Cup. The win is the "biggest in U.S. cricket history and is already being regarded as one of the biggest upsets in the sport," said CNN. 

How popular is cricket in the US? 
Nationwide, there are at least 400 individual cricket leagues, according to statistics from USA Cricket. This equates to approximately 200,000 cricket players in the U.S., a figure that's expected to rise. 

Scores of fans are attending cricket matches live. The June 9 Pakistan-India match and the June 12 U.S.-India match, both of which took place in New York, each drew more than 34,000 spectators. And worldwide viewership was among the highest of any sport. More than 400 million people globally watched the Pakistan-India game, The Athletic reported, compared to the 125 million that watched this year's Super Bowl. 

Why the surge in popularity? 
Cricket's growth is due partially to a demographic shift over the past century. While baseball was cemented as America's national pastime by the early 20th century, in the 1960s, "increased immigration from the West Indies reinvigorated cricket … and in the decades that followed, immigration from South Asia also dramatically increased," said The Atlantic.

Today, there are "more than 5 million Americans of South Asian descent," said The Atlantic, and many of them have "almost nowhere local to play or watch the game." This has created pent-up demand.

Due to this continued rise in immigration, "perhaps it's inevitable that international sports eventually find their way into our collective consciousness," said Vanity Fair. For example, Formula 1 racing was "barely a blip on our sporting radar" just a few years ago. Also putting cricket on everyone's radar in a few years: The sport will be featured at the 2028 Summer Olympics.

Movie theaters have not had an easy go of it. In 2020, when the pandemic had everyone sheltering in place, moviegoers quickly grew accustomed to the convenience of at-home streaming. Last year's Hollywood strikes complicated the issue, as the strikes stalled or halted many anticipated film productions and left holes in the box office schedule. Plenty of movie theaters have since shuttered, and as of 2023, ticket sales were "still one-third lower than in 2019," said Marketplace. 

How and why are they struggling? 
The most obvious reason is the advent of streaming. The pandemic got people used to doing everything from home, and many movies became available on streaming services almost immediately. As streaming kept audiences "glued to the small screen," said The Economist, Americans who went to the cinema more than five times in 2000 went fewer than three times in 2023. An even more stark statistic: "One out of every five moviegoers has vanished since the pandemic," said The Hollywood Reporter.

Now, many low-to-mid-budget films barely get theatrical releases. And while box office numbers do not measure a film's quality, they have long been the standard by which financiers measure a project's success. The box office has a "bad case of long Covid," said The Economist. "Worldwide takings last year were a quarter below their pre-pandemic peak." 

How are they adapting? 
Movie theaters have one unexpected virtue: Their "unorthodox real estate" — sloped floors and windowless rooms — prevents landlords from easily using them for any other purpose, said The Wall Street Journal. Although this alone will not save them, movie theaters are finding innovative ways to appeal to audiences. "Cinema operators are investing in the basics, improving sounds, picture quality and seating, as well as bolstering its food and beverage offerings, events and alternative programming," said CNBC. These changes make simple moviegoing an immersive all-inclusive experience.
 
The biggest of the big screens have also been thriving. IMAX, whose screens are "as large as [125 feet] wide with denture-rattling sound systems, had worldwide box-office takings of $1.1B last year and its biggest-ever haul in America and Canada," said The Economist.