CWI FACING FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES

CCNTV6

They say money is at the root of all evil but it seems it's the lack of that's causing all the problems facing West Indies cricket. Cricket West Indies made it quite clear today that they are in need of cash as they aim to battle debt going in 2026. They believe meeting with the International Cricket Council is crucial to changing their fortunes moving forward.

Transcript

00:00Cricket Western News is in need of money and it's no small sum.

00:04In their quarterly briefing today, they gave a cautionary note to cricket fans that 2026 may be their toughest year yet.

00:11And it's absolutely no secret that we have a chronic financial situation.

00:18In that the international model at this point, the financial model from ICC,

00:24it is not favorable to a small region like ours.

00:30And so it makes it even more difficult for us to navigate the way.

00:34And it's something we keep championing at the ICC level, of course, myself and Chris, our CEO.

00:40They intended to host over 33 events in 2026.

00:45CWI's CEO Chris Derring says hosting teams like Sri Lanka and New Zealand

00:50is not as profitable as hosting teams like England and Australia.

00:54When we have to host Sri Lanka, Pakistan and New Zealand,

00:58and as much as we enjoy the cricket playing against them,

01:01hosting those teams comes with a financial price.

01:05It's a price that we have to pay to keep our seat at the head table at the ICC

01:09and retain our full membership.

01:12So it's a simple fact of life that we have to host these tours.

01:15It's under the Future Tours Program that we agree to.

01:18But you're not going to be able to recoup even the television production costs of those tours,

01:25much less make a profit to then pay for all the developmental tournaments.

01:29And we host, you know, people maybe don't appreciate the number of events and tournaments

01:34that Cricket West Indies hosts.

01:35Derring added, hosting the Cricket World Cup in 2024 helped them to pay off prior debts

01:41and other expected debts in the near future.

01:45He believes that their problems started when they no longer earned a large sum of money

01:49touring rather than hosting teams.

01:51So we, in fact, used to make more money when we toured than hosting because hosting was a cost.

01:58But when we toured, because countries wanted to host us, we were such an attractive team,

02:03they would pay us a significant piece of the revenues that they were generating.

02:07But the world saw what was happening with television rights,

02:11and every board decided that they wanted to keep those television rights to themselves,

02:16knowing how quickly they were going to be growing.

02:18And Cricket West Indies was caught as the only board with no domestic TV rights at the time.

02:26In the meantime, the West Indian debt piles on,

02:28partly as a result of their commitments to keep their full membership status with the ICC.

02:33Derring is hopeful, though, that the ICC will soften its approach

02:36as other full member cricket boards are also starting to see diminishing returns in world cricket.

02:43Sergio Dufour, TV6 Board.

Category

Transcript

Be the first to comment

Recommended