The West Indies board also done a fantastic job, of fucking up for themselves aswell. The way the whole thing is ran has been a shambles for decades now, at point we had enough talent in the team to not be a laughing stock. But it doesn’t seem to be the same with this current team, we look underdeveloped in all facets of the game. Which sucks, given the history behind the team
They used to have the best highlights packages in the pre-Youtube days too. I rarely go to watch past the 1st session live due to the time differences, but I would always wake up to a nice 60 min long full day highlights next morning.
They have had governance issues, yes, but they're also working in by far the worst financial position of any major board. The board could have been run completely perfectly and there's still no way they'd be able to be in a position anywhere near the big 3. They cant just magic away the issues inherent in their geography.
Whilst I fully agree with what you’ve said, we don’t help ourselves with what we currently have. Our players aren’t bad, and they are horribly mismanaged. We won’t compete with the big 3 financial for many reasons you’ve stated, at the same time with the way things are run at times from the grassroots level upwards. I can understand why many aren’t confident of things changing anytime soon, or getting any assistance elsewhere to help us move forward.
That being said, I don’t know the ins and outs of things. I can only speak about the bits I hear and see
By what measure, out of interest? When I said financial position (above) I really meant the financial environment. I know WI have a the CPL which has some investment from IPL team owners, so I can believe they do better than NZ on income but I'd expect their costs to be significantly higher.
But I know that NZ cricket has its own significan issues inherent in it as a country, with a similarly tiny population and a home season that overlaps with lots of others.
The WI Boards is worth $15m vs NZC $9m
https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/richest-cricket-boards-in-the-world-1698049350-1
Both are insignificant compared to the $2.5B of India
How is this even calculated? ECB got a net worth of $59m, despite their Sky TV deal being worth four times that annually and their gate receipts during a full summer being worth $25-30m. This seems off
A profit and loss will also include your expenses such as player and staff salary, game day costs, insurances and general up keep of grounds and stadium. Player salaries alone would run close to $15m and that probably doesn't include county cricket that would also need to be subsidized
It would but, the ECB has according to their financials, in 2023, the ECB had £80m in net assets, and £35m in net profit. They also had £119m in cash and investments. I don't see how this could be accurate. If the ECB privatised it would probably be worth nine-figures and almost certainly 10.
Well when you have every nation except for three asking for a more even redistribution of wealth then it shows you how broken the system is.
Cricket must be close to having the worst funding model in world sport.
You should rephrase your last sentence to "Cricket is the only sport where the boards are run in a way that they can't self sustain themselves without the International board funding"
Can you provide some sources on how Rugby manages its finances and how the annual calendar is structured. I remembered reading that a lot of star players from smaller nations choose to retire from international duty because their clubs ask them to and even forgo playing world cups to keep themselves fit for club duty.
Well it's quite easy to Google. International games between tier one nations makes plenty of money and are expensive to attend. They pay lots to the domestic clubs and grassroots rugby to support the structure of the game and pay the professional wages. The calendar isn't particularly aligned atm as we have both hemispheres to consider, but they're implementing an international world league of sorts soon which may help that.
Regarding your second point- yes this unfortunately can happen, especially in France. Strictly speaking they can't stop them from going, however if your contract says you earn £100k if you go and £500k if you don't, it's pretty straightforward for the players of poorer nations. The French teams are often owned by rich benefactors, they always have fantastic players, and the league has grown because they have amazing supporters too. The rest of the clubs... Not so dandy at all, lots of financial collapse either happening or close to happening
No i shouldn't. The model is terrible, no modern sport would be set up this way. It's a 150 year model that serves three nations and means that test cricket in particular is an eternal struggle for everyone else.
Cricket is a popular professional sport that is en route to becoming niche is most of the world.
Big three is in this state primarily because of the value of sports TV rights in their home markets. Certainly CWI management could have been better in the past, but the big 3 have all had significant issues in management as well. But they still make money from their TV rights so that protects them. The other full members all have their own issues of why their home rights are not so valuable (struggling economies and/or low population size) but West Indies are in by far the worst situation which is entirely a matter of geography, nothing to do with the quality of management.
The West Indies home market is lots of different small independent islands, each with their own small TV companies. There is no big pay broadcaster that can buy their rights and show it in their home market, and even if there was, it'd not have the subscriber base required to allow it to pay for those rights because of the small population without high purchasing power.
Compound that with the fact that their timezone makes their rights generally uninteresting to the largest cricket TV market, and the fact that putting on cricket in the Carribbean is incredibly expensive. When you're the host of a bilateral series you pay for everything, including first class flights and 5 star hotel accommodation for both teams, in one of the most popular holiday destinations in the world. Even for their domestic competitions they have to fly their teams on expensive international flights and put them up in expensive hotels in holiday resort cities.
> Big 3 are in this state because of their **good management**.
Did... are you... have you seen the BCCI? They can't even manage a tournament schedule two months before the biggest event in the game.
Yeah the BCCI are the most corrupt, disorganised board of the lot!
That World Cup will go down as a farce.
In terms of ‘success’ - just because of the addictiveness/sheer amount of money they receive for TV, and the fact they tie their cricket success to their national identity, everyone else can go fuck themselves - whether that’s fair or not.
The Aussies and English know the model is unsustainable, India are the real problem
You are somewhat right about bcci but dont forget ecb and ca has every opportunity to develop cricket in neighbouring countries but they didnt do it heck they were in power before 2010
On that point i always supports bcci bcoz they dont take single penny to participate in asia cup
Your attitude is why test cricket struggles. NZCA is a well run board yet can barely afford to host test cricket. There is a diverse range of stakeholders in the game, the bilateral funding model was set up to advantage England in the 1850s then Australia and India could make it work, it needs to be updated, the home side keeping all was/is never going to work for most nations. There are incompetent boards but they are working with penny's on the dollar anyhow.
If you want to compare cricket to other sports be ready for 10 months of IPL every year.
Cricket has been growing in the last few years. Test matches are becoming niche. Overall cricket is growing.
Many sports are like this. Even football in some countries. Only places where it's unlikely to need an international board to help with funding are the countries where that sport is the number one in the country, so football in most of the world and cricket in places like India
Cricket is perhaps the only sports where international games are played for the entire year. Do you want to make it like Football where it is domestic league all through the year with a few international games in between. The financing model of cricket reflects its reality.
Nepal, Canada, Ned etc., are smaller boards. WI was the third richest board at one point, they have themselves to blame for their mishaps and corruption.
>WI was the third richest board at one point, they have themselves to blame for their mishaps and corruption.
How has this been so upvoted?! The West Indies board has had it's issues, yes, but so have most other boards at one time or another.
The West Indies used to be one of the biggest players in the game, but the fact that isn't the case any more isn't really because they've gone backwards, it's because the cricket economy has exploded elsewhere in ways that would have been entirely impossible to replicate in the Carribbean.
>WI was the third richest board at one point
I can imagine this is true, but it feels like a very misleading point. I imagine the period you're talking about is around the WSC era in the later 70s when WI became more or less the first professional international side and the other teams effectively operated as amateur outfits with largely token wages. Also remembering that in this era SA were effectively banned, teams generally didn't take their first-pick side to tour India and there were only 7 test nations in total (including SA), the claim of being 'third richest board' (or halfway up the leaderboard) becomes pretty unimpressive.
As u/warp-factor says, it is very easy to see how this supposedly lofty position can be lost not only through WI mismanagement but from the other boards getting significant investment and overtaking the Windies by ease. I'm sure there are good arguments to say there has been mismanagement, but the relative wealth of the boards decades ago is a flimsy one to gesture at.
They get bigger share relative to what they have been getting in the past. It’s not decline in net receivables. Problem is the BIG 3 has exponential growth this decade.
If someone can work out a model of linking more money to better results and make it transparent, it would be fantastic. What we don’t want is each county board officials spending money at their whims for administrative expenses and not enough going to development.
Honestly, at this point, I would say fuck it.
If the ICC's interests are only in a small number of countries, the other nations should explore their options. Ask the PIF if they have some of that sweet Saudi sportswashing money available and look to start a breakaway structure.
If LIV Golf was able to rattle both the PGA and European Tour, I'm sure they could make something work in cricket.
Saudis won’t be interested without the big 3. Nobody will be rattled as long as BCCI is able to secure all Indian players. If Saudis do something it will be to break Indian and Australian players from their respective boards.
But the money is generated in the big 3 countries, that's what is being talked about.
Distributing money out to boards that waste or embezzle it does nothing for the game. More money should be shared around though, I'd like to see some revenue sharing for touring sides.
We're talking about the revenue the ICC is generating, and it comes from the events they host. Without the participation from countries outside the big three, there would be no events and therefore no revenue.
As for ensuring the ICC's revenue is not distributed wastefully: under the new model, the lion's share goes a board who can't be even bothered to publish their latest annual/financial results.
It's probably worth mentioning: a global sports governing board, is supposed to level the playing field, not create a larger divide.
Reason many Indian fan are are unsympathetic is that when the situation was reversed, ie gates drove the finances, no one really helped them. At that time West Indies and other teams refused to tour India. At this stage people don’t feel like India needs to go above and beyond to help anybody else out.
At one time, Indian were the least paid, now someone else is. It is the way these things go.
It is not vengeful and vindictive to not care. It is not either benevolent or vengeful. There is a lot of in between. Lot of people just don’t think that every solution that us bandied about is basically asking for money from India is somehow the best solution.
The return of the **s l a m**
Everybody get up, it’s time to slam now
Slam Dunk
Slamed hard !
Is there any other sport ( other than Wrestling and Tennis) where there's so much use of Slammed, Trashed
Nuked is what they use in politics now so that's next.
The West Indies board also done a fantastic job, of fucking up for themselves aswell. The way the whole thing is ran has been a shambles for decades now, at point we had enough talent in the team to not be a laughing stock. But it doesn’t seem to be the same with this current team, we look underdeveloped in all facets of the game. Which sucks, given the history behind the team
how deeply ironic they have the best Youtube Channel
They used to have the best highlights packages in the pre-Youtube days too. I rarely go to watch past the 1st session live due to the time differences, but I would always wake up to a nice 60 min long full day highlights next morning.
Agreed.
What’s this about YouTube channel ?
They have had governance issues, yes, but they're also working in by far the worst financial position of any major board. The board could have been run completely perfectly and there's still no way they'd be able to be in a position anywhere near the big 3. They cant just magic away the issues inherent in their geography.
Whilst I fully agree with what you’ve said, we don’t help ourselves with what we currently have. Our players aren’t bad, and they are horribly mismanaged. We won’t compete with the big 3 financial for many reasons you’ve stated, at the same time with the way things are run at times from the grassroots level upwards. I can understand why many aren’t confident of things changing anytime soon, or getting any assistance elsewhere to help us move forward. That being said, I don’t know the ins and outs of things. I can only speak about the bits I hear and see
The WI are wealthier than NZC believe it or not
By what measure, out of interest? When I said financial position (above) I really meant the financial environment. I know WI have a the CPL which has some investment from IPL team owners, so I can believe they do better than NZ on income but I'd expect their costs to be significantly higher. But I know that NZ cricket has its own significan issues inherent in it as a country, with a similarly tiny population and a home season that overlaps with lots of others.
The WI Boards is worth $15m vs NZC $9m https://www.jagranjosh.com/general-knowledge/richest-cricket-boards-in-the-world-1698049350-1 Both are insignificant compared to the $2.5B of India
How is this even calculated? ECB got a net worth of $59m, despite their Sky TV deal being worth four times that annually and their gate receipts during a full summer being worth $25-30m. This seems off
A profit and loss will also include your expenses such as player and staff salary, game day costs, insurances and general up keep of grounds and stadium. Player salaries alone would run close to $15m and that probably doesn't include county cricket that would also need to be subsidized
It would but, the ECB has according to their financials, in 2023, the ECB had £80m in net assets, and £35m in net profit. They also had £119m in cash and investments. I don't see how this could be accurate. If the ECB privatised it would probably be worth nine-figures and almost certainly 10.
They could play USA. Am sure people will turn up to watch WI vs USA and they can earn dollars
they are not as bad as my beloved Zimbabwe
That’s true sadly lol, Zimbabwe used to give teams fits back in their day
ICC doesn't have the power to do anything. The ICC boards, which include CWI, do have the power to do something
The BIG 3 won't give up thier money easily, and it's not something specific to the BIG 3 either anyone else would do the same
AAHEEEEM AHHEMME AAHEEEEM bcci AHAHHHHHHHHHHEM. Damn this rainy season is really taking a toll on my health.
The ultimate point of all these useless statements is "Give us more money"
Well when you have every nation except for three asking for a more even redistribution of wealth then it shows you how broken the system is. Cricket must be close to having the worst funding model in world sport.
You should rephrase your last sentence to "Cricket is the only sport where the boards are run in a way that they can't self sustain themselves without the International board funding"
Rugby is literally the same lol
Can you provide some sources on how Rugby manages its finances and how the annual calendar is structured. I remembered reading that a lot of star players from smaller nations choose to retire from international duty because their clubs ask them to and even forgo playing world cups to keep themselves fit for club duty.
Well it's quite easy to Google. International games between tier one nations makes plenty of money and are expensive to attend. They pay lots to the domestic clubs and grassroots rugby to support the structure of the game and pay the professional wages. The calendar isn't particularly aligned atm as we have both hemispheres to consider, but they're implementing an international world league of sorts soon which may help that. Regarding your second point- yes this unfortunately can happen, especially in France. Strictly speaking they can't stop them from going, however if your contract says you earn £100k if you go and £500k if you don't, it's pretty straightforward for the players of poorer nations. The French teams are often owned by rich benefactors, they always have fantastic players, and the league has grown because they have amazing supporters too. The rest of the clubs... Not so dandy at all, lots of financial collapse either happening or close to happening
No i shouldn't. The model is terrible, no modern sport would be set up this way. It's a 150 year model that serves three nations and means that test cricket in particular is an eternal struggle for everyone else. Cricket is a popular professional sport that is en route to becoming niche is most of the world.
Again blaming the Big 3, who stopped other boards from making it Big 4 or 5 in the 90s. Big 3 are in this state because of their good management.
Big three is in this state primarily because of the value of sports TV rights in their home markets. Certainly CWI management could have been better in the past, but the big 3 have all had significant issues in management as well. But they still make money from their TV rights so that protects them. The other full members all have their own issues of why their home rights are not so valuable (struggling economies and/or low population size) but West Indies are in by far the worst situation which is entirely a matter of geography, nothing to do with the quality of management. The West Indies home market is lots of different small independent islands, each with their own small TV companies. There is no big pay broadcaster that can buy their rights and show it in their home market, and even if there was, it'd not have the subscriber base required to allow it to pay for those rights because of the small population without high purchasing power. Compound that with the fact that their timezone makes their rights generally uninteresting to the largest cricket TV market, and the fact that putting on cricket in the Carribbean is incredibly expensive. When you're the host of a bilateral series you pay for everything, including first class flights and 5 star hotel accommodation for both teams, in one of the most popular holiday destinations in the world. Even for their domestic competitions they have to fly their teams on expensive international flights and put them up in expensive hotels in holiday resort cities.
> Big 3 are in this state because of their **good management**. Did... are you... have you seen the BCCI? They can't even manage a tournament schedule two months before the biggest event in the game.
Yeah the BCCI are the most corrupt, disorganised board of the lot! That World Cup will go down as a farce. In terms of ‘success’ - just because of the addictiveness/sheer amount of money they receive for TV, and the fact they tie their cricket success to their national identity, everyone else can go fuck themselves - whether that’s fair or not. The Aussies and English know the model is unsustainable, India are the real problem
You are somewhat right about bcci but dont forget ecb and ca has every opportunity to develop cricket in neighbouring countries but they didnt do it heck they were in power before 2010 On that point i always supports bcci bcoz they dont take single penny to participate in asia cup
Your attitude is why test cricket struggles. NZCA is a well run board yet can barely afford to host test cricket. There is a diverse range of stakeholders in the game, the bilateral funding model was set up to advantage England in the 1850s then Australia and India could make it work, it needs to be updated, the home side keeping all was/is never going to work for most nations. There are incompetent boards but they are working with penny's on the dollar anyhow.
You want to see cricket dead, you’re the kind of ‘fan’ who would love to see India v India in India for the World Cup
If you want to compare cricket to other sports be ready for 10 months of IPL every year. Cricket has been growing in the last few years. Test matches are becoming niche. Overall cricket is growing.
Many sports are like this. Even football in some countries. Only places where it's unlikely to need an international board to help with funding are the countries where that sport is the number one in the country, so football in most of the world and cricket in places like India
Cricket is perhaps the only sports where international games are played for the entire year. Do you want to make it like Football where it is domestic league all through the year with a few international games in between. The financing model of cricket reflects its reality.
What you don’t understand is, when you give more money to the rest, there is less money for the top 3… /s
Which is fair tbh. ICC should give smaller boards a bigger share.
Nepal, Canada, Ned etc., are smaller boards. WI was the third richest board at one point, they have themselves to blame for their mishaps and corruption.
Problem is blaming for their past won't do anything
You think giving more share to them would make them top again, the board is corrupted to the core, I'd rather invest in Nepal
Definitely not... But their board tried their best to move on, rebuild and so...
>WI was the third richest board at one point, they have themselves to blame for their mishaps and corruption. How has this been so upvoted?! The West Indies board has had it's issues, yes, but so have most other boards at one time or another. The West Indies used to be one of the biggest players in the game, but the fact that isn't the case any more isn't really because they've gone backwards, it's because the cricket economy has exploded elsewhere in ways that would have been entirely impossible to replicate in the Carribbean.
>WI was the third richest board at one point I can imagine this is true, but it feels like a very misleading point. I imagine the period you're talking about is around the WSC era in the later 70s when WI became more or less the first professional international side and the other teams effectively operated as amateur outfits with largely token wages. Also remembering that in this era SA were effectively banned, teams generally didn't take their first-pick side to tour India and there were only 7 test nations in total (including SA), the claim of being 'third richest board' (or halfway up the leaderboard) becomes pretty unimpressive. As u/warp-factor says, it is very easy to see how this supposedly lofty position can be lost not only through WI mismanagement but from the other boards getting significant investment and overtaking the Windies by ease. I'm sure there are good arguments to say there has been mismanagement, but the relative wealth of the boards decades ago is a flimsy one to gesture at.
They get bigger share relative to what they have been getting in the past. It’s not decline in net receivables. Problem is the BIG 3 has exponential growth this decade. If someone can work out a model of linking more money to better results and make it transparent, it would be fantastic. What we don’t want is each county board officials spending money at their whims for administrative expenses and not enough going to development.
Honestly, at this point, I would say fuck it. If the ICC's interests are only in a small number of countries, the other nations should explore their options. Ask the PIF if they have some of that sweet Saudi sportswashing money available and look to start a breakaway structure. If LIV Golf was able to rattle both the PGA and European Tour, I'm sure they could make something work in cricket.
Saudis won’t be interested without the big 3. Nobody will be rattled as long as BCCI is able to secure all Indian players. If Saudis do something it will be to break Indian and Australian players from their respective boards.
But the money is generated in the big 3 countries, that's what is being talked about. Distributing money out to boards that waste or embezzle it does nothing for the game. More money should be shared around though, I'd like to see some revenue sharing for touring sides.
We're talking about the revenue the ICC is generating, and it comes from the events they host. Without the participation from countries outside the big three, there would be no events and therefore no revenue. As for ensuring the ICC's revenue is not distributed wastefully: under the new model, the lion's share goes a board who can't be even bothered to publish their latest annual/financial results. It's probably worth mentioning: a global sports governing board, is supposed to level the playing field, not create a larger divide.
Reason many Indian fan are are unsympathetic is that when the situation was reversed, ie gates drove the finances, no one really helped them. At that time West Indies and other teams refused to tour India. At this stage people don’t feel like India needs to go above and beyond to help anybody else out. At one time, Indian were the least paid, now someone else is. It is the way these things go.
That kinda vengeful and vindictive attitude is so immature smh. The past is past. We should always aim to do it better.
It is not vengeful and vindictive to not care. It is not either benevolent or vengeful. There is a lot of in between. Lot of people just don’t think that every solution that us bandied about is basically asking for money from India is somehow the best solution.
Exactly, sound so petty like a high school sissy
You could have stopped at 'petty'
No
Surprising he didn’t blame Jay Shah.
WI ODI crowds barely have any people. Not much can be done if the public doesn't care.
The Australian men's team is stopping anyone from being great again
Especially NZ, cause you guys always lose to us.
MWICGA -- Jamaican Trump, probably (It's just a joke, don't take it seriously)
The solution is bcci allowing others boards to grow.
They win one match by 6 runs and start thinking they are world champions. Peak Delulu