Lottery plans fade away

If the Barbados Cricket Association (BCA) had returned to the bargaining tables, a decision could have been reached to satisfy all the players in the lottery game.

Steve Stoute, president of the Barbados Olympic Association (BOA), was reacting to the announcement of the cricket association's lottery.

After the BCA made their final decision, there has been no official dialogue since then between us. Certainly, if the BCA had come back to the table from the BOA perspective we would have been receptive, Stoute said.

My response would be one of regret that the sporting bodies couldn't respond to the Prime Minister's plea to formulate a lottery to finance sport in Barbados.

The BCA recently announced they would be going ahead to join with the Leeward Islands Lottery Holding Company (LILHC) to have their own lottery, independent of the merger between the BOA, the Barbados Turf Club and the National Sports Council.

Stoute stands firmly behind the view that the market is too small for two lotteries.

I don't think the market can really sustain two lotteries. We have two lotteries going right now and the revenues have been reduced substantially not in profitability. They are still profitable, but for the various sporting bodies to be aggressively fighting each other for market share, it is in my opinion a sad commentary, he said.

The long-serving administrator said the pie had to be divided among those four players and Government also wanted a fund for culture and the arts, but the offer to the BCA was fair and equitable.