As the West Indies cricketers prepare to leave for their tour of New
Zealand, the Caribbean Broadcasting Union (CBU) is sounding another
alarm about spiralling costs of providing television coverage of
overseas tours.
The situation was so serious, warned CBU secretary-general Patrick
Cozier, that it was a real possibility that the CBU would have to
consider curtailing broadcasts of overseas West Indies tours unless a
solution was found.
That is always an unfortunate possibility, but we are trying not to
focus on the downside, he said in New York.
We are trying to focus on the upside by saying, We have to keep
cricket going. As a consequence we are trying to come up with
creative ways of approaching it.
Although the CBU is going ahead with plans to cover the games in New
Zealand, it may end up losing a large sum of money on the telecasts
throughout the region.
Cozier said the CBU didnt have the kind of support from the various
television stations to make the project financially feasible.
Our overseas tours are becoming very very touchy, he said. Right
now, we have acquired the rights for the New Zealand tour (but) right
now we do not even have the support from the stations to be able even
to pay for those rights.
The stations are having problems affording it. As of todays date we
dont have enough commitments from stations to even cover the basic
costs.
However, he was quick to point out that the financial problem he was
talking about wouldnt affect coverage of Test matches in the
Caribbean.
For the domestic tours, we have an arrangement with the West Indies
Cricket Board (WICB) who are the rights holders for the domestic or
home tours, he said.
For the overseas tours, we have to buy the (broadcast) rights from
international rights holders who either hold or have bought rights
globally for regions of the world, which include the Caribbean. They
obviously dont have the same commitment to West Indies cricket as the
WICB.
Such organisations and companies, he added, view the tours as an
opportunity for economic exploitation