London: Former England captain Michael Atherton has criticised the International Cricket Council’s proposed profit-sharing model for the next four-year cycle (2024-2027) where India will be getting 38.50 per cent from an annual USD 600 million revenue pot.
If the proposed model by ICC’s Financial & Commercial Affairs (F&CA) committee is passed during the Annual Conference in June, BCCI will be getting USD 231 million annually while England will be the second-highest grosser with a 6.89 per cent share, which translates to USD 41.33 million. Australia is third in the list with earnings of USD 37.53 million, which is equivalent to 6.25 per cent.
The entire list of ICC associate member countries will have 11 per cent distributed between them.
He, however, added that since all other countries will witness a leap in revenue, there will hardly be any push-back at the global conference.
“The planned distribution model will be discussed at the next ICC meeting in June, but with every country getting a larger amount (in absolute terms) than now, there may be little appetite to challenge the proposals,” Atherton wrote in his column for the ‘Times London’.
“As Ehsan Mani, the former ICC president and former chairman of the Pakistan Cricket Board, said this week: the money is going where it is needed the least,” the former right-hander stated.
The primary formula followed is which country has the maximum sponsorship, revenue stream from TV broadcast rights, and India is a runaway leader when it comes to Star (an arm of Disney) which puts the maximum money for rights of global events.
“It is this last (commercial contribution) that skews the outcome significantly, given that by far the biggest contribution comes from the Indian television market,” said Atherton.
“The last two factors are problematic, though, in determining any distribution. For example, for their performances in ICC events, India, Australia and England are given the highest ratings.
“In other words, these are the countries that have competed most effectively in the ICC knockout competitions over the past 16 years or so. But they already enjoy an inherent advantage, because they host more key events than anyone else.” Atherton believes that “those countries who enjoy the good fortune of having dynamic home markets already exploit that advantage through their domestic television revenue streams.” His reference was to the handsome earnings of the BCCI from broadcast rights of India’s matches at home.
“These lucrative markets, therefore, give India and to a lesser extent England and Australia an in-built advantage.” Atherton expressed concern in his column that West Indies, which still produces a lot of talented cricketers, will get only USD 27.5 million annually just because as an assortment of island nations, they are not a commercially viable destination for broadcasters.
“The West Indies, for example, suffers from being in a high-cost, low-income region: as a tourist destination, the cost of flights and hotels is high (thus the cost of staging cricket is high), and in a region of only five million people, its television revenues are low (how much it contributes commercially to the ICC deal is put at 0.1 per cent).” “For the West Indies, and others, the revenue stream from the ICC is more important than internal markets. The ICC distribution should be about helping to equalise an inherently unequal global landscape,” he wrote.
Atherton, the cricketer-turned-journalist, is a well-known critic of BCCI’s hegemony.
“There is a deeper malaise at work here. The economic transformation of India in the past three decades and the growing importance of television revenues have distorted cricket’s landscape, making it more unequal and, therefore, in need more than ever of careful strategic thought and leadership. But there has been an absence of this at the ICC.” PTI KHS AM.
