For years now Test cricket tours to the
Caribbean have been hemorrhaging
money. For this several logics have
been proffered. Most of them seem
to mimic a catch-phrase of one popular
commercial line in the United States – “I
have fallen and I can’t get up!”
The question that must be asked of the fallen
I think is – have you really tried? It seems
almost a fact that over the years the West
Indies Cricket Board of Control (WICBC)
has been comfortable operating under a “net
effect” principle. This implies that as long as
proceeds from overseas engagements are
enough to off set perennial loses on tours
to the Caribbean, then all is well. The time
has come to develop a marketing strategy
which, over time, will bring profitability to
international cricket staged by the West
Indies Cricket Board in the Caribbean.
The need goes beyond pride. The Test
cricket circuit now includes new entrants
Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and South Africa. Can
the West Indies then safely bank on visiting
lucrative Australia and England as frequently
as it did in the past? Secondly, West Indies
are no longer indisputably the best team in
the world. In the era of keener competition,
will the West Indies still be the premier
drawing card to agendas staged by other
Test playing nations?
Our viability as a cricketing nation should
neither be left solely to the calibre of our
players, nor to chance. Our management
must strive to host tours profitably. To do
this it must begin to think in cadence with
the times.
Among the spurious logics for our failures,
two of the most embedded are the vast
differences between Test venues in the
Caribbean and the limited seating capacities
at them. The first is intended to gain
sympathy for our geography. This has to be
accepted as a given. From there a least cost
logistics plan for moving a tour through
the region has to be devised.
The second argument is a crutch that has
become useless. With tour guarantees,
players salaries and other expenses so
magnanimous and denominated in hard
currencies it is ludicrous to expect arenas
with 17,000 capacities to carry much
weight. This is especially true when gate
receipts are in devalued currencies. Of
course, the public has been fed several
other misgivings.
There are some new realities in
international cricket that administrators in
the West Indies have yet to come to grips
with. First, for any spot, advances in the
art of global television have subordinated
in-person attendance to, at most, a
secondary requisite for profitability.
Secondly, for fans who attend cricket
matches, one-day internationals are
becoming bigger attractions than Tests.
Third, the constant exposure of people
in the Caribbean to United States styled
packaged sporting events through satellite
television has made cricket presentations
seem bland, indigestible, and in need of
revamping. Fourth, the West Indies administration
continues to ignore socio-economic shifts in its
cricket audience. As a consequence the marketing
of international cricket fixtures to be staged in the
Caribbean is mistakenly limited only to the region.
Working with these dynamics is challenging, but
not insurmountable. We must, however, inject
some seriousness into our approach, run our
cricket as a business and not liken it to a trough for
special interests and pensioners.
Today what sporting activity can thrive without a
global television audience? The answer is none. Our
cricketing administration needs to negotiate better
terms with the television networks that come into
the Caribbean. These negotiations must move
from by-the-way discussions and into the fore,
as they are vital to a tour’s profitability. From the
distributors that carry the exploits of Tendulkar to
living rooms in India, Waqar’s to those in Pakistan
and Boon’s to those in Australia, the West Indies
must be rewarded as well. The WICBA must
engage professionals, skilled at negotiating rights to
this medium. Once the talents of the West Indies
team are up for consumption and are in tandem
with the skills of others, mechanisms must be
positioned for harnessing value.
Beyond the television coverage there is a market,
particularly in North America, for capsulated match
and series highlights. At present all that is available
hers is pirated, low quality, home productions,
through some corner grocery store. The payper-
view distribution channels in Commonwealth
immigrant communities within North America
must also be tapped. The underpinning of this
strategy is to broaden the base for earnings,
particularly in the currency in which most of our
tour expenses are denominated.
For even the most enthralling Test encounter,
anywhere in the world, poor attendance is
evident. Take the West Indies vs Australia Test in
Brisbane recently. The first day’s crowd of 11,513
wilted to 2600 on the last day. At the Inaugural
India v Zimbabwe at Harare, the first day’s 4000
was the high. It is fast becoming a fact that for a
tour to become successful it must be
interspersed with an engaging one-day
tournament. Test crowds on weekends
and public holidays are marginally better.
However, be it sagging economies,
shrunken attention spans or competing
activities, one-day series are in vogue.
The traditional “thermos bottle” cricket
supporter in the Caribbean works
days for a living. Evening/night cricket
would therefore infringe less on normal
working hours and encourage more
family attendance. The effort staged
at the National Stadium in Kingston in
1982, immediately after the West Indies
returned from Australia was encouraging.
Even though revenues from in-person
attendance in the age of global television
are to be relied on less, it is foolish not
to strive for improved attendances.
Furthermore, we ought not to ignore
what these occasions do for our local
vendors. Making a prestigious one-day
international series integral to the
cricketing product in the Caribbean is vital
to sprucing the game’s image there.
Queen’s Park Oval in Trinidad has read
the writing on the wall. It has embarked
on a US$235,000 programme to gear
the ground for night cricket. For long
term viability, the WICBC should help
foster like projects in its other four
major cricketing arenas. To make money,
investments lie these have to be made.
Furthermore, these improvements will
better position us to bargain for bonanzas
like a World Cup.
Global television has not only served
to collapse information time, it has also
homogenised consumer taste. Whatever
pageantry or customer reverence
viewers in the Caribbean are exposed to,
they rightfully want to experience some
of it. The debacle at Sabina Park, and to a
lesser extent the one at the Queen’s Park
Oval, when Australia were there last,
needn’t be explicated here.
However, better facilities are needed
at both to maintain the integrity of our
playing surfaces, and to comfortably
accommodate our patrons. Attempting
to negotiate television rights will be
useless if when the question of rain is
brought up we can only point to two
pieces of plastic.
Souvenir counters, selling more than match
programmes, need to be introduced – permanently.
A give-away or two to show customer appreciation
for spectator patronage, might also be a good idea.
The potential for gleaning advertising dollars at
matches needs also to be exploited further. The
focus on sponsorship also needs to be widened.
Finally on this matter, the terms under which
private and company boxes operate at our cricket
grounds needs reviewing. Too many people,
particularly those who can afford to do so, take
pride in not paying for the spectacle. Guests to
boxes should be made to pay at least half of the
regular admission fee. This “freeness” tradition in
the Caribbean must be stymied if we are serious
about profitability.
More frequently as I roam the crowds at Sabina
Park’s international fixtures, I encounter spectators
who are domiciled in the major cities of the United
States. Are these occurrences by chance or are
they the nature of things. I would surmise that
more and more West Indians abroad are choosing
to bundle a short holiday back home with their
interest in international cricket. This presents
another opportunity for the marketing arm of
the WICBC to pre-sell tickets and reap additional
foreign currency. It should explore alliances with
tourist boards, hoteliers, and regional airlines to
offer holiday packages to the Caribbean when a
tour is on.
In North America the target market shouldn’t
be narrowed to just West Indians. Thousands of
immigrants from other Test playing nations now
settled here have the wherewithal to see their
stars in the Caribbean – if only we would ask.
Fixtures like the United Way’s match in Toronto’s
SkyDome pose excellent promotional platforms
for upcoming tours.
Some years ago, the WICBC engaged the services
of Mark McCormack’s IMG marketing company.
I am presuming it was to help sort some of our
marketing activities out. IMG is savvy, globallyrecognized
sports marketing outfit. It
helped market cricket in Australia, and is
the biggest agency of its kind in the world.
The company’s forte, however, is in
golf and tennis. One of its more recent
successes in the Caribbean has been its
involvement in the Johnny Walker Gold
Tournament in Jamaica. If West Indies
cricket is still one of IMG’s clients, is the
relationship still benefitting us? Can we do
better by engaging a firm more familiar
with our set of circumstances? These are
questions that need answering.
Regarding the administration there might
be a need for the Board to more carefully
pick its staff. The granite culture of excricketers
needs to be tempered with
more real-world lateral thinkers. Should
the Board demand more from a team manager who returns from an overseas
tour than just an ordinary tour report?
Overseas tours should be fertile grounds
for gathering new ideas. Success takes
time and money. We must, however,
start somewhere.
As Tony Cozier noted in this magazine’s
recent editorial, it’s a tragedy that such
a prolific team like Pakistan visited us
on a protracted schedule. Curtailing the
duration of international cricket tours to
the Caribbean, in the long run, will do us
more harm than good. Our youngsters
will be deprived. Let’s strive once again
for hosting full tours profitably.