(Trinidad Guardian) As the second edition of the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) Professional Cricket League (PCL) nears, the franchises are another year closer to their deadline of having to become sustainable or face collapse.
The WICB opted to financially prop up the PCL for the first four years, with the hope that the franchises work on sponsorship, so that they can stand on their own. Currently the WICB allocates a total of US$45,000 per month for each of the six franchises to run their business in terms of paying players’ salaries and preparing their teams.
If the franchises can’t find sponsors, then the WICB will have to continue their search for an overall sponsor to take care of the bill. Chairman of the Barbados Pride franchise Conde Riley says that the WICB would have to be more innovative and find ways to get sponsors on board. “The world economy is in recession and this of course has affected all the Caribbean governments which we can go to for assistance.
“The Corporate Caribbean has also been affected and those who decided to come on board with cricket, invested in the Caribbean Premier League (CPL). This has made life very difficult in terms of getting sponsors to come on board. The franchises have three more years to find investors or face a collapse. We know it is very difficult to get the buy in and this is why I am saying that we have to look at innovative ways of getting people involved in terms of getting financial assistance.”
President of the WICB Dave Cameron recently called on the franchises to become more professional in their dealings and said that some could miss out on the monthly allocations, part of which comes from the PCL Fund for Development.
“We are saying that the PCL is a new business and franchises need to run a quality professional set up. Some of them haven’t done that and the board has taken a decision that if franchises do not comply with the standard, there could be penalties. And the only penalty that we could exact is the withholding of funds.”
The WICB is also not getting the revenues as before because the Champions League is no longer around to give them an annual boost. Also if the fall out with India continues and they don’t tour the Caribbean, this would result in a great loss for the West Indies because the Indian tours are always successful financially.
The PCL has been a welcomed idea by the Cameron administration as it now captures up to 120 players plus officials and gives them a sense of financial security while they ply their trade. The PCL, is hailed as one of the new programmes to re-establish the sport over the next few years.
