As the West Indies took to the field in Guyana yesterday (Thursday) for the start of the second Test against South Africa, they did so with unbranded shirts: a microcosm of cricket’s challenges in the Caribbean.
Cricket West Indies (CWI) is at something of a commercial standstill. There’s no principal sponsor for the national teams nor a sponsor for home Test and Twenty20 Internationals series. The ‘Windies’ have also struggled to find linear television deals in the Caribbean, with no long-term deal in place.
It’s quite the in-tray for the next chief executive and commercial director of CWI, following CEO Johnny Grave’s announcement this week that he would be leaving the organisation after seven years.
Grave will officially depart in October, likely before the appointment of his successor but after the hiring of a new commercial director. Dominic Warne had held that role since 2017 but moved on in January to become commercial head for the ICC T20 World Cup, held in the Caribbean and the US this June and July.
SportBusiness understands that Warne’s successor is expected to be announced in the next few weeks, once approved by the CWI board.
Under Grave’s seven-year tenure, CWI has restructured its finance department, moved to a four-year budgeting cycle that better meets the FTP schedule (up from two) and completed a financial turnaround.
In 2018, the organisation had a deficit of $22m (€20m). In its most-recent financials, posted in March for the year-ending September 30, 2023, a surplus of $12m was recorded. Revenues came in at $62.3m while net income was $14.3m.
While there is work to be done on the commercial side, as one source told SportBusiness: “CWI is no longer desperate to do deals for cashflow.”
The calendar has helped, with two tours from each of India and England over the last three years and the Cricket World Cup, meaning CWI will likely close out 2024 “with a war chest of cash”.
That will, understandably, dwindle over the next few years based on the commercial draw of the touring countries – one source said the cash reserves will likely drop to around $10m by 2026 – but will then be boosted again when India and England come to visit.
Sponsors wanted
For cricket purists, the sight of the West Indies players without a corporate brand splashed across the front of their whites was a welcome one. Less so for the commercial department.
SportBusiness has learned CWI is in the market for a title sponsor for both Test and T20 series, as well as a principal partner to fill that front-of-shirt vacancy. They are considered priorities for the new commercial director but again, given the nature of the calendar, there is little reason to rush a deal.
Internally CWI believes a three-year cycle that starts with a tour of Australia in June 2025 and includes a visit to India in late 2026 is an appealing prospect for a major corporate brand to be associated with.
A back-of-shirt sponsor does exist in the shape of betting firm Dafabet, while CG United is the sleeve sponsor under a wider agreement that gives the regional insurance company title sponsorship rights to home ODI series.
The West Indies did have a main shirt sponsor for the recent three Test match series in England (pictured below), albeit that was a short-term deal with existing partner, the global financial services provider Apex Global.
Apex has been a flexible commercial partner of the CWI, previously title sponsoring the home Test series against England in 2022.
The firm first came on board in an initial three-year deal in 2021 after CWI’s long-time sponsor, the holiday operator Sandals, ended its association. Sandals had been ever-present on the front of the West Indies shirt across its men’s, women’s and age-group sides from 2017.
A new kit supplier is not of concern, however, with the West Indies still in the first year of a multi-year agreement with Macron. That came about only after a premature end to CWI’s previous three-year sponsorship agreement with Castore, which had been due to run to the end of September.
Domestic media balance
CWI’s contracted media partner is pay-television broadcaster Rush Sports, which secured exclusive digital rights back in June 2023. That agreement concludes this November after England’s limited-overs tour, comprising three One-Day Internationals (ODIs) and five T20 Internationals.
Rush Sports belongs to Caribbean Premier Sports Limited, a joint venture between telcos C&W Communications and Digicel, meaning the West Indies games have been made available on OTT platform Flow Sports (owned by C&W), pay-television’s SportsMax (owned by Digicel) and the Digicel+ streaming platform.
At the time of that deal, SportBusiness reported that CWI was in negotiations for a linear domestic broadcast deal, yet nothing permanent has since transpired.
For the ongoing South Africa series, CWI has trialled a partnership with Guardian Media Group-owned television network CNC3 in Trinidad and Tobago. It means the series is being shown live on linear TV but is also receiving outdoor advertising, print newspaper, radio and online ball-by-ball coverage through the wider GMG offering.
Combined, the Rush Sports deal and short-term GMG tie-up tick the boxes for CWI, whose domestic media strategy has been to ensure a balance between reach and revenue.
In a small, fragmented market where piracy is rife, CWI has struggled to get the long-term deal it wanted domestically. But there’s an admittance within the organisation that there can be no short-term fix again.
Time, however, is on Grave’s successor’s side: after England depart, the West Indies do not play a home series until June 2025, when Australia visit.
Top international markets
CWI works with the Pitch International agency on the sale of its home bilateral series rights in international markets. The timing and value of these deals have been dictated by the International Cricket Council’s Future Tours Programmes (FTP), currently set in stone to 2027.
India and the UK are the major international markets for CWI, and both will be targeted once the domestic picture is completed.
West Indies matches are currently not shown on linear television in India – something the organisation is keen to address in the next deal. Pay-TV broadcaster Sony Pictures Networks had been the broadcast partner in India, but in April 2021 CWI signed an exclusive four-year agreement with online streaming platform FanCode.
The contract is comprehensive, covering around 150 international and 250 domestic cricket matches in its entirety. It has encompassed two lucrative tours of the Caribbean by India, in 2022 and 2023. The FanCode agreement ends this year and will be a priority for CWI and Pitch, though the multi-billion dollar merger between Disney Star and Reliance Industries has complicated go-to-market timelines.
Disney and Reliance, majority owner of Viacom18, announced the merger of their Indian television and streaming assets in February, creating an $8.5bn media behemoth that is still awaiting regulatory approval. The two entities house India’s most valuable cricket rights: Viacom18 holds IPL digital rights and India national team rights; while Disney holds IPL linear rights and ICC rights.
The merged entity’s main competitors in terms of sports broadcasting will be media groups Sony and, to a lesser extent, Zee Entertainment. A planned $10bn merger between Sony and Zee collapsed last year.
According to the ICC’s FTP, India are not scheduled to visit the West Indies until after 2027, so there’s plenty of time to get the right deal in place.
Financially, CWI can live without an Indian rights deal over the next few years, during which time Australia, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Afghanistan all tour, albeit a source close to the organisation told SportBusiness: “From a West Indies cricket ‘brand’ perspective, they’d love a TV deal sooner rather than later. But around 2027 has always been the target. There’s no financial necessity there.”
In the UK, a five-year deal with pay-television’s TNT Sports expires in 2025. The deal includes two tours of England and has performed well given the favourable time-zone.
However it is unlikely the Warner Bros. Discovery-owned broadcaster will be heavily challenged when the rights are next put back on the market, given pay-TV rival Sky continues to prioritise international T20 leagues over most overseas bilateral series.
The Australian market is one to watch, however.
CWI has been without a broadcast partner in the country since 2021 when Australia last toured the Caribbean. The rights-holder was Foxtel, whose future is now uncertain given recent reports News Corp is actively looking to sell the pay-TV business.
With Australia’s international side back on West Indian soil next June for two Test matches, three ODIs and three T20s, that tour is being seen at CWI headquarters in St John’s, Antigua as the catalyst for a multi-year deal to be done. The West Indies beat Australia in a Test match at the Brisbane Cricket Ground in January, piquing Australian interest in their opponents.
That will serve to further boost media revenues, which account for around 70 per cent of the total CWI pot. Sponsorship accounts for up to 20 per cent, with the remaining 10 per cent split evenly between ticketing and the contribution from the region’s franchise Caribbean Premier League.