At least the masses will get a slice of the pie

Cricket South Africa (CSA) will be hoping the sport in this country will never be the same again after they entered into what can surely only be a profit-sharing deal with the SABC to broadcast their much-vaunted but undoubtedly over-hyped new T20 league in November and December.

In industry circles, almost everyone agrees that the SABC, seriously in debt and about to start retrenching staff, could not have afforded the market value of the broadcast rights, for which SuperSport were willing to pay $5 million last year, and legally could probably not be splashing out money while cutting employees unless they wanted to land up in the labour court.

Even their chief operating officer, Chris Maroleng, refused to confirm in the press conference to announce the deal that the SABC had dipped into their pockets at all for the broadcast rights.

So there is little doubt CSA are banking on the income from their share of selling advertising on the SABC platforms and whatever sponsorship they can sell for a product that will almost certainly be inferior to the original Global T20 League they were meant to be putting on show.

The long delay in confirming the league means the poor people responsible for the logistics and the marketing of the tournament are in for the most torrid end-of-year work schedule. CSA chief executive Thabang Moroe glibly stated that the same marquee players signed up for the GLT20 are still on the CSA books and “their services are already secured”. But the likes of Kieron Pollard, Chris Gayle and Brendon McCullum would have long since committed themselves to one of the other profusion of events on the calendar.

CSA won’t be able to have it both ways – their contracts with the team owners can’t be null and void if the contracts with the marquee players aren’t as well, and one can’t realistically expect those stars to have been sitting around, turning down offers, while waiting for the South African league to finally materialise.

At least the Proteas will be playing, as they arrive back from the ODI series in Australia around November 19, allowing them to participate in the last three weeks of the event.

It’s also going to be a hard product to sell because one cannot see the South African public, their cynicism towards CSA only increased by this whole fiasco, generating levels of enthusiasm for this new league that will be much greater than the declining interest in the normal domestic franchise T20 competition; after all, it’s going to be all the same players, with just a sprinkling of the international journeymen who have become rich thanks to the most ephemeral of cricket’s formats.

It also seems inevitable that CSA is going to land up in court at some stage, thanks to the number of enemies they have cultivated in pandering to egos rather than economic sense. Apart from the GLT20 team owners, if the rumours are true that both Cape Town and Paarl will host teams, at the expense of Bloemfontein, then the power struggle between the southern cricket cabal and that of the north could be played out in the open in court.

For the SABC, however, this deal makes perfect sense. They get to broadcast something without any financial risk and cricket lovers from Durban to Hondeklip Bay, Musina to Mossel Bay, will have access to a lot more cricket as SuperSport’s monopoly is broken.

The one area where this new T20 league can do some good is in taking the game to the masses.