Cricket West Indies director, Anand Sanasie has revealed that Cricket West Indies owes the Guyana Cricket Board and Cricket Guy Inc. around US$700,000.
The Director made this revelation during a press conference in the upper flat of the GCB office yesterday where he stated, “currently the West Indies Cricket Board owes between CGI and GCB probably US$700,000 which we were hoping to get to move a few things forward.”
Sanasie pointed out that this debt is not the only instance of CWI’s financial woes.
“Obviously they have their own financial issues which have to be dealt with and they don’t owe us alone. They basically owe Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad and Jamaica in the vicinity of US$4,000,000 in total.”
The honorary secretary of GCB offered clarity on the financial situation of the territorial board, stating that “We survived.”
However, he revealed that their reserves have been depleted due to the investment made in the La Bonne Intention facility.
“If you notice I haven’t said anything about LBI. LBI is something we felt needed to happen. It is going to be a tremendous help for us in the long run and it’s already helping to a great extent because we don’t have to scrunch around for grounds but LBI kind of sucked out our reserves,” Sanasie explained.
Last year, the financial health of CWI was described by its president Ricky Skerritt as being in the Intensive Care Unit due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“This crisis has put our already poor financial state into ICU. It is like going to the doctor with an illness, and as he is about to prescribe the medication you get a stroke,” Skerritt said in an interview with Guardian Media Sports. The governing body was forced to slash staff salaries and overheads last May and reduce its overall funding of cricket development throughout the region in an attempt to stay afloat.
Last week, it was reported CWI secured a “ground-breaking” new broadcast rights deal with American sports cable giants, ESPN+, which will see the delivery of all West Indies’ Tests, One-Day Internationals and Twenty20 Internationals in the ICC Future Tours Programme starting from this month.
The board has been without a rights deal for the last year but will now see the upcoming home tours by Sri Lanka, South Africa, Australia and Pakistan later this year televised by North America’s largest sports broadcaster.
“Broadcast media rights income is crucial to the future financial sustainability of CWI, and this five-year rights agreement is just the start of good things to come,” Skerritt said in a statement.
