Money changes everything

In his account of the evolution of the famous American sports cable channel ESPN: The Uncensored History (2000), Michael Freeman describes a programming discussion between Bill Rasmussen and his son Scott on the eve of its launch. ‘Dad, play football all day for all I care,’ Scott finally exclaimed. ‘I’m just sick of talking about this.’ Bill Rasmussen did a doubletake: ‘Why not? I mean, why not? What’s wrong with football all day?’

Today, owned by Disney Corporation, ESPN is a round-the-clock sports juggernaut: among other claims to fame, it is George Bush’s favourite television entertainment of choice. And now it is in the cricket biz: in conjunction with Rupert Murdoch’s Star Sports TV, ESPN has acquired the rights to broadcast International Cricket Council events/tournaments from 2007 to 2015. Cricket all day? Why, it already is – and the night as well! No wonder the 'bundle' was chased with such avidity, with eventual financial benefit to cricket being tipped to exceed $US1 billion.

The reaction has been three cheers at the ICC, and a more circumspect two most places else. The quantum of money washing around cricket is unprecedented and unforseen; its effect is therefore unimaginable. Money makes people do strange things. As Ringo Starr said when asked to explain the making of that notorious turkey The Magic Christian: ‘People will swim through shit for a dollar.’ All eyes will be on how the ICC carves up its bounty – or, at least, they should be. The council now calls to mind Bill Clinton’s finely-honed description of Major League Baseball during its last lockout: ‘Just a few hundred folks trying to figure out how to divide nearly $2 billion’.

For me, the big question was never how much cricket could raise, but why it was raising it. The answer appears to be: because it can. Here is India’s IS Bindra: ‘Much of the money that comes from this deal can be ploughed back into the development of the game and that will strengthen cricket even more.’ Here is the West Indies Ken Gordon: ‘This agreement...will put the ICC in an extremely strong financial position and allow us all to develop cricket on a much wider front.’ Here is HRH Tunku Imran, President of the Malaysian Cricket Association: ‘The revenue received by the ICC can be used for a new era of development as it will have an impact on all of our 87 Members below Test level..’ So, we’re all going to be developing our fingers to the bone. Glad that’s settled.

But how much ‘ploughing back’ is there really? What width ‘wider front’ are we talking? And how much should junior countries be benefiting anyway when only India, Australia and England among the Test nations operate profitably? What kind of development? Where? By whom? What about the players? The umpires? The administrators? And how accountable and equitable are those who distribute and spend the money that the game raises? After all, what do we have to show for the developing we’re already meant to have done? In the last twenty years, the ICC has promoted two nations to Test status: one is a basket case; the other, the odd exception notwithstanding, can so far only beat that basket case. Now that ESPN and Star are on the hook, it is time to start asking: Cui bono? And I’m not talking about U2.