West Indies board 'are getting sponsors'

	Carib Beer's pull out from West Indies domestic cricket was the latest loss of a sponsor for the board © The Nation

Julian Hunte, the West Indies Cricket Board president, and Donald Peters the chief executive, have played down the financial concerns of the game in the Caribbean despite the recent loss of sponsors for domestic tournaments.

Neither the four-day or one-day regional events had title sponsors after Carib Beer pulled out of the first-class event shortly before it began. It left the board needing to fund the tournament, which has been expanded this year, out of their own reserves but Peters said options are on the table.

"We are getting sponsors," Peters told the CMC agency. "But the directors have set some parameters for levels of sponsorship. We have proposals from a number of small sponsors who want to work with the WICB, and we are doing this, and the week before I came to Guyana, we were signing a contract with a major player in the Caribbean.

"We will announce this later in the month, so I want to assure you that it is not an absence of sponsors," he added. "I have read that we are broke, and that sponsors are leaving us, but it really is that we are leaving them. The important thing is if our side starts winning, people will join us.

"Nobody rejects us flatly. They just tell us what they can afford and we decide if it's the right fit. What we have also offered sponsors is to come together to sponsor one competition, so we are optimistic."

Earlier this week Peters was criticised for remarks that put the blame for the money problems at the foot of the West Indies players for not performing consistently on the field and making the team a marketable product. Hunte, though, said the economic climate was a major factor in making life difficult, but that the board was prepared to support themselves.

"We are always in the market for sponsors, but if you will look back to Shell and to now, you will see the number of firms that have sponsored West Indies cricket and have left," he said. "The impression that we get is, given the economic realities of the Caribbean right now, that it is difficult to find sponsors for our tournaments, so that we can play them on a home and away basis.

"The cost for the four-day competition is US $2.2 million. We have people shying away from it, but our policy is to ensure that we find the resources every year, as we budget, to be able to run our premier tournaments ourselves.

"Where we can get a sponsor or a number of sponsors in a small market like ours, we will embrace them. But the policy is not to depend on the sponsors because we will run the risk of not doing what we are supposed to do."

WICB's chief financial officer Barry Thomas said the board had plans to pursue alternate means of revenue generation. "The full implementation of a professional league by 2010 and increased revenue from non-traditional sources such as merchandising and new tournaments are some of the things we plan to pursue," Thomas said. "Also executing an efficient World Twenty20 Championship next year to ensure a positive financial return is also another means to give our revenue a boost."

Thomas said apart from the global recession, developing franchises for a new cricket league and a fresh international touring schedule following the end of the current Future Tours Programme could have a negative impact on the WICB's finances.