West Indies board signs marketing deal

The West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) has set-up a joint venture company with an international sports marketing company to handle all its licensing, merchandising and web operations.

The seven-year joint-venture deal, with Centrex International, was signed at the end of 2006 although the details have never officially been released by the WICB. Its existence was only made public recently on the caribbeancricket.com website.

The joint venture will initially concentrate on merchandising with the first official West Indies cricket store set to open next month inside Barbados's Grantley Adams airport and an official on-line store on a new West Indies cricket website. More outlets are planned to follow throughout the region in partnership with local retailers and manufacturers. Centrex will handle all the branding, design and development of collections, stock warehousing, product fulfillment, customer services, marketing and sales.

This is Centrex's second venture into cricket as it has just signed a similar deal in the USA, although that also gives them a wider sphere of commercial activity including the full marketing and staging rights for all one-day internationals staged in the USA.