Cricket 2.0 by Tim Wigmore

Author:Tim Wigmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Birlinn

NINE

SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST

‘India watches Indian cricketers. India doesn’t watch cricket’

Sanjog Gupta, executive vice-president, Star TV Network

At the Bvlgari Hotel London, a five-star hotel on the edge of Hyde Park, in June 2017, Brendon McCullum declared, ‘All of us are unashamed T20 mercenaries now.’

McCullum, who had retired from a brilliant international career the previous year, was exactly the sort of player coveted by T20 leagues around the world. Signing him, along with a raft of other elite players, was seen as a harbinger of good times to come for South Africa’s brand-new T20 franchise tournament. Having the launch in London was designed to affirm that this competition was the Global T20 League, as its name declared. It was envisaged that combining many of the best players in the world with several Indian owners, who would drive interest in India, would create a league with global appeal.

Four months later, these illusions were scotched. The first season of the Global T20 League was cancelled after failing to secure sufficient broadcasting revenue and sponsorship income. The debacle ended up losing Cricket South Africa an estimated £11 million – about half their total cash reserves – and the job of their chief executive, Haroon Lorgat. A year later, another league was cancelled before its first ball: the UAE T20x, a T20 franchise tournament in the UAE. In August 2019, a third league – the Euro T20 Slam, a competition featuring sides from Ireland, Scotland and the Netherlands – was also cancelled before its first season. All the while, most T20 leagues around the world were consistently posting financial losses.

All of this shattered the myth that T20 tournaments guarantee profit. Instead, creating a T20 league is more like starting a Silicon Valley company: the few that are most successful make gargantuan amounts of cash, while most of their rivals haemorrhage cash.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.