In the last decade, cricket has started to show signs of becoming a future commercial powerhouse in the world of sport. Many factors have been and can be attributed to this steady rise in prominence, some of which I am going to explore.
However, before the controversy, Stanford provided large
sums of money into his heavily-backed tournaments which culminated in a huge
series of $20 million winner-takes-all matches featuring an England XI against
a West Indies All Star XI.
Despite the early promise and ambition, exemplified by the ECB signing a five year contract, the Stanford Super Series was to last just the solitary year following his arrest in February 2009. In this particular case and in particular opposition to the aforementioned examples, the commercialization of cricket in this individual instance was simply too good to be true.
The Packer Revolution
In 1976 Australian tycoon Kerry Packer wanted to gain the
rights to show Australian cricket which were held by the Australian Broadcasting
Commission (ABC) at the time. Packer’s television company Nine Network bid for
the rights but the Australian Cricket Board (ACB) refused to accept, despite
Packer’s offer being eight times more than ABC’s at the time. This in turn led
to a revolutionary cricket league being created by Packer himself. In doing so, he
was able to hold exclusive rights to air high quality cricket on his
network.
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| A World Series Cricket match between Australia and the West Indies in 1979 (PHOTO: Patrick Eagar) |
This league was named as the World Series Cricket with three
teams representing Australia, the West Indies and the Rest of the World. There
were two main reasons for the inception of the World Series, including the fact
that Packer wanted exclusive rights to air cricket. The other reason behind the
breakaway league was that Packer felt the players were not paid enough money to
be able to earn a living solely from playing cricket.
Packer managed to sign up a large amount of the world’s best
players to his three teams as he held secret talks with leading players from
Australia, England, South Africa, Pakistan and the West Indies. Understandably,
this led to serious rifts within some cricket boards, most notably Australia
and the West Indies. England’s captain at the time, Tony Greig, was vilified
for his significant involvement and was stripped of the captaincy.
In terms of the initial statement regarding money and wages,
Windies captain Clive Lloyd spoke of how joining the breakaway league was
“nothing personal” and was simply about being able to earn a substantial
income. It has been argued that Packer showed Lloyd and his compatriots how
much their respective cricketing skills could actually be worth. This therefore
in turn allowed Packer to continue his ‘revolution’ and convince the top stars
to join up.
The introduction of Twenty20 cricket
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| Atomic Kitten performed at the inaugural t20 finals day at Trent Bridge back in 2003 (PHOTO: Tom Shaw) |
More recent examples of cricket being heavily commercialized
involve the introduction of the Twenty20 format. The first official
introduction was back in 2003 when the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB)
brought in a new domestic competition.
The first ever t20 match held at Lord’s
drew in a record crowd of 27,509 which was the highest attendance for a county
game in 50 years, aside from one day finals. Furthermore, Australia’s first domestic
t20 game saw a sell-out 20,000 WACA crowd on 12th January 2005 which
was in turn the first time in almost 25 years that the ground had sold out.
It could be argued that Twenty20 cricket throws up many a
question in terms of the counterfactual history behind it. The huge amounts of
money that are now pumped into the game, and in particular the shorter format,
would likely make for players from previous eras having long, successful and
distinguished careers, not to mention potential earnings. Players such as Sir
Ian Botham, Viv Richards and Garry Sobers are certainly central to such ‘what
if’ questions. Indeed, despite their careers ending before t20 really took off, former players such as Wasim Akram and Tom Moody have carved
out careers in the t20 format through their coaching of sides in leagues throughout the world.
The rise of the IPL
The first international t20 game was played in February 2005
between rivals Austraila and New Zealand. Following the subsequent growth in
popularity, the inaugural t20 World Cup was staged two and a half years later
in South Africa. This tournament would go on to have a huge effect on the game
in general, not least Twenty20.
The winners of the tournament India went on to
create the first tournament of its kind, the Indian Premier League (IPL). Barely
six months had passed and the first game of the inaugural IPL was being played
in Bangalore. The tournament has since proved a huge success, heading into its
8th season this April.
However, without heavy backing and
commercialization, the tournament arguably would not be as big or as successful
as it has been. Relating back to the Packer revolution and the way that
cricketer’s skills were effectively able to be cashed in on, the first IPL auction proved to be somewhat of a modern day example. Massive amounts of money were
exchanged, with Mahendra Singh Dhoni and Andrew Symonds going for over a
million US dollars each.
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| The IPL has been hit by a wave of sponsors and advertising (PHOTO: Robert Cianfione/IPL) |
Such sums of money coupled with the sheer popularity of
cricket in India was always likely to make the IPL a success. Add on to that a host of
star names cheered on by bumper sell-out crowds and the commercialization of this
particular facet is all but complete. Furthermore, the waves of advertising to
hit the IPL is also just another example of its commercialization.
There have been several main title sponsors for the tournament,
including DLF and Pepsi, as well as shirt sponsorship which can often see
several different sponsors amalgamated throughout the shirt. This is not all in
terms of sponsorship – even things such as sixes being hit, talented new
players and key moments in a game have seen commentators and post-match presenters drawn into saying phrases such as “here is the winner of the Pepsi Emerging Player
award”.
Television rights is another factor that has significantly helped with
the commercialization of not only the IPL but cricket in general, which again
you could argue brings the Packer revolution full circle. The 2015 edition featured
eight channels with rights to the IPL across the world, from the Caribbean to
Singapore to England and Sky Sports.
Subsequent worldwide t20 tournaments
Following the successes of the IPL, other cricketing boards
from around the globe began setting up their own tournaments, mirroring the
IPL. The first of the new leagues was created in Australia at the end of 2011
with eight teams representing six cities, instead of their typical state
system.
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| The defending BBL champions, the Perth Scorchers (PHOTO: Mark Nolan/CA) |
Sri Lanka were supposed to run their Premier League in the summer of
2011 but the first tournament was postponed until a year later, with Bangladesh
running their own version in February 2012.
The West Indies created the Caribbean
Premier League in 2013 which has since seen commercial and cricketing success.
The latest country to dip their toes into the proverbial water is Pakistan, who
initially attempted to launch the competition back in 2009 but it was cancelled
due to security risks.
An example of the economic history in terms of the
commercialization of cricket could be seen in a case involving the Pakistan
Super League. Two high profile names in Chris Gayle and Kevin Pietersen
reportedly refused to play because they were not offered enough money. We have
seen this sort of thing regularly in sports such as football which have been
heavily commercialized already, but these types of incidents are now appearing
more and more in cricket.
The Stanford Super Series
Another example of commercialization in cricket is the now-disgraced billionaire Sir Allen Stanford. In a very similar way to Kerry
Packer, Stanford offered huge amounts of money to stars of the game. In 2005,
Stanford announced plans to revamp and reenergise cricket in the West Indies by
pumping $28 million (£16 million) into a Twenty20 tournament involving 17
Caribbean countries. Each team were handed $100,000 (£58,000) each for their
involvement as well as a further $10,000 per month to help aid preparation. The
eventual winners of the competition would go on to scoop $1 million in prize
money. This kind of money was unprecedented at the time in terms of the cricket
world, especially involving teams from the Caribbean. This is a clear example
of the economic history side of the commercialization of cricket and the darker
side of it too.
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| Allen Stanford before..... (PHOTO: Jewel Samad) |
Having bankrolled the Stanford t20 and Stanford Super Series,
the billionaire was soon exposed for who he really was, having been involved in
a huge $7 billion (£4.5 billion) fraud and faced up to 230 years jail time.
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| .... Allen Stanford after (PHOTO: Aaron M Sprecher/Bloomberg) |
Despite the early promise and ambition, exemplified by the ECB signing a five year contract, the Stanford Super Series was to last just the solitary year following his arrest in February 2009. In this particular case and in particular opposition to the aforementioned examples, the commercialization of cricket in this individual instance was simply too good to be true.
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