IPL teams could play in £1m games at the Oval
➤ Surrey want ECB approval for lucrative friendly tournament ➤ Other city Test venues ready to attract world’s top players
Surrey want to bring Indian Premier League teams to London to play an annual tournament at the Oval in matches worth £1million each, as English cricket looks for ways to recover from the financial crash of the Covid pandemic.
The Daily Telegraph revealed yesterday that the England and Wales Cricket Board was prepared to sell stakes in Hundred franchises to IPL teams as it looks to monetise a tournament it believes will finance the game’s future.
Now it can be reported that Surrey and other counties at city Test venues are looking at their own ways to develop the game, and have asked the ECB to relax rules that prevent them arranging friendlies or exhibition matches with teams from around the world.
Surrey, ideally, would like to host an annual mini-tournament in September involving IPL teams and Twenty20 sides from Bangladesh, Pakistan and West Indies, on a possible yearly rotation basis. A sell-out at the Oval is worth £1million in revenue before broadcast income is taken into consideration.
“We think the most deliverable plan is at the end of the season to bring an IPL team or teams from other parts of the world to play in a small baby-steps competition,” Richard Gould, the chief executive of Surrey, said. “There are two venues in London, plus Manchester, Birmingham and Leeds, all of whom I know would be interested in hosting events, but what we don’t currently have is a green light to do it. “All of the contracts we have signed in the last year have increased control measures from ECB that prevent us from putting on any significant games without their permission, which makes us more nervous about investing in such a venture. If we get a green light from the ECB, we know there is so much more we could do for the global audience that surrounds us in London.”
Gould said there had been “informal conversations” with IPL teams over the past couple of years, but they had gone no further due to ECB and Board of Control for Cricket in India rules. The ECB tightly controls the cricket it sanctions, to protect its broadcast partners, Sky and BBC, who paid more than £1billion for exclusive rights to all English professional cricket from 2020 to 2024. Any matches Surrey arrange would sit outside that deal.
But in light of the pandemic and losses at big Test venues that were empty last year and have also been starved of conferencing revenue, the counties are calling for change. They believe they can tap into the “globalised audience” that bought tickets at the World Cup in 2019 and 2017 Champions Trophy but do not attend county or England games.
“This is moving in a more positive direction,” said Gould. “I think ECB efforts are focused on new competition but the major venues have suffered a significant financial shock because of Covid. We want to recover but we don’t just want to hand out the begging bowl to the ECB. We want to trade our way out of this. Every county in a major city has its own population it wants to work with. Whether it is Birmingham, Leeds or Manchester. We all look through the census and see what populations we have and want to find ways of doing more for them.
“In football or rugby, if you are a domestic team, you can organise a friendly with a team from anywhere in the world and crack on. The Football Association and Rugby Football Union actively support that. We are asking to operate similarly to other sports so we have more freedom to create our own events, such as an annual event where we have an IPL team, Bangladesh team or Pakistani team playing friendlies in London.”
Gould does not believe selling a stake in Hundred teams to IPL franchises will work, although this is one way the ECB is looking to monetise the tournament and try to ensure India stars play in it.
He said: “I don’t think there is a significant future in that. In the three or four years we have been looking at it we have not been able to find a way an overseas team can provide added value.”