Cricket West Indies (CWI), for some reason, has not been able to ink lucrative television endorsements in an era where the region is home to some of the world’s most iconic T20 players.
In response to queries surrounding the sum total of how much the board receives from TV rights, CWI President Ricky Skerritt explained that CWI was not in a bargaining position to make more lucrative demands. He contended that it was up to interested broadcasters.
He was at the time being quizzed by interviewer Ryan Bachoo, who referenced a March 2019 report which stated that West Indies only earns £12 million on TV rights while England lands a whopping £220 million.
“Money earned from broadcasting rights has little to do with the ICC. It has to do with the markets. It has to do with the broadcasters themselves and what they perceived the market to be worth.
“You [WI and England in this context] only earn money from broadcasting rights that you own and you only own events in your hometown. So, it’s only when we have cricket in the West Indies that we have a product to sell to the broadcasters. So even when we participate in part of that earnings in England, India and so on, we get nothing from it,” Skerritt explained.
He noted that TV broadcasting rights are an issue for the board which doesn’t have a complete broadcast agreement with most countries during the current uncertain climate where revenue continues to decline and expenses are fixed.
The CWI President contended that a revamped and proficiently managed CWI could improve the financial and other issues the board is faced with.
Skerritt noted that a financial review of the board was completed and they are beginning to implement those recommendations, however, he did not get into the specifics of the recommendations but the financial vulnerabilities of the Cricket West Indies (CWI) seem to be worsening under the new administration.
The CWI President during the recent interview was quite transparent about those liabilities, noting that the board is currently spending more than it earns mainly because of ICC’s inability to cough up fiscal guarantees previously promised.
“West Indies cricket has been suffering for some time from a shortage of working capital,” Skerritt said of the board’s finances. “Basically, we spend more money than we earn most years and when we earn more than we spend, it’s usually small amounts. We had an approach where we always spent money that we thought was coming in advance of it coming, and sometimes the money that came wasn’t quite what we expected.”
To further establish his point, the CWI president proverbially took a shot at the ICC as he explained the complex relationship with the international body and its questionable mode of operations.
“For example, we had been told that the ICC would be granting us a total of $128 million over a seven-year period… of course, we were told that by people who were in touch with ICC but ICC can project at times without it being totally accurate so the ICC honours fell a little bit and instead of getting $128 million over seven years, we are going to get $119 million over the same period.”
“So that means West Indies was expecting an additional nine million dollars which we wouldn’t get but we would have already spent,” the former West Indies manager articulated.
The board’s payroll exceeds US$1.5 million monthly.
