Yahoo News Cricket World Cup has grown into a commercial monster - but it's wealthiest nations whose pockets are being lined
The Cricket World Cup returns to England as one of the most lucrative and most watched events in all of sport. The tournament is now the third biggest stand-alone world championship in any sport, below football and rugby, according to Sportcal, a sports market intelligence company. It will generate about £400 million for the International Cricket Council in broadcasting rights alone.
For Steve Elworthy, the managing director of the 2019 World Cup, planning for this event began in early 2014. A year before the 2015 World Cup, Elworthy went to Australia and New Zealand to see the organising committee’s preparations.
The London 2012 Olympic Games had shaped what Elworthy believed was possible. “What really recalibrated the way that events were run – not necessarily commercialised but probably an element of that – was the Olympics,” he said.
Elworthy, who has about 100 staff for the competition, used both the Women’s World Cup and Champions Trophy in 2017 – two tournaments that were widely praised – to gauge what was needed to make the World Cup even better.
The competition will feature open-air fan parks at cities around England and Wales. Demand for tickets has been high, with 3.2 m applications for the total of 800,000 available.
When Clive Lloyd lifted the trophy in the first World Cup final at Lord’s in 1975, his team shared £4,000 in prize money. This time, the winning side will share £3.2 m: an indication of how much the tournament has changed over its 11 editions.
Indeed, there was a striking commercial innocence to the first three editions, hosted in England in 1975, 1979 and 1983: the semi-finals were played on the same day at the same time, so fans could only watch one game on TV.
The World Cup’s metamorphosis into a commercial juggernaut began in 1996, when it was co-hosted by India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, explains Jon Long, the former head of strategy at the ICC: “This felt like the first time the vibrancy of the event reached the masses in its most important commercial market.”
Even so, the broadcasting rights in 1996 were worth only £11 m. The change in policy before the 2003 World Cup – with the ICC bundling broadcasting rights to all its events over a cycle, as for all global events from 2016-23, rather than selling them as one-offs – turbocharged commercial growth further, Long believes. Most important of all has been the surging Indian economy.
This has brought unprecedented wealth to cricket worldwide, but challenges too. When India were knocked out in the first stage of the 2007 tournament, a 16-team event, broadcasters were furious. India’s early elimination was a factor in what became known as “The Event from Hell”. Of major international sports, only basketball’s dependence on the American dollar rivals cricket’s reliance upon the Indian rupee.
More than any other major sport, cricket has been beset by angst over the format of its marquee event. This will be the eighth different structure used in the past nine editions of the World Cup.
The 2019 competition features 10 teams, down from 14 in 2015, yet is even longer. Indeed, at 46 days the Cricket World Cup is the longest in any sport – rugby, at 44 days, comes closest. But by guaranteeing India at least nine matches in a round-robin format, the structure is tailored to maximise the ICC’s revenue.
The trade-off is that the Cricket World Cup can be considered the most exclusive major world event in men’s sport: with 22 teams fewer than basketball and football; 10 fewer than rugby union; and even two fewer than kabaddi.
This contraction comes when global depth has never been greater. Scotland, world ranked No 13, beat No 1-ranked England last year, and Hong Kong, now No 22, almost toppled India. Rather than the ICC’s employees, the decision to cut the tournament to 10 teams was driven by the most influential full members. England were known to be strong advocates.
The World Cup’s location, too, reflects cricket’s commercial strongholds.
From 2011-23, all four finals will be held in the sport’s economic big three: Australia, England and India. Even the change in venues compared to 1999, the last World Cup in England, hints at how cricket has commercialised.
Then, matches were shared around all 18 county grounds – while the Netherlands, Scotland and Ireland also hosted games. This time, matches are concentrated in the bigger centres, and restricted to England and Wales. “It’s difficult to compare the way the commercial world was now compared to ’99,” says Elworthy.
Indeed, in some ways the ICC could even claim to have done a better job of commercialisation than Fifa, albeit from a much smaller base. Since 1996, the broadcasting rights for the Cricket World Cup have risen 36 times. Those for the football World Cup have increased by 18 times since 1998, even if the broadcasting rights for the football World Cup, at £2.3 billion last year, are still worth six times more than cricket’s.
The commercial importance of the World Cup to the ICC’s member nations has never been greater. In many countries, broadcasting rights for bilateral international cricket are being squeezed, with more of broadcasters’ cash now diverted to covering T20 leagues. The World Cup is essential to fund the ICC’s development work in the men’s and women’s game worldwide.
Yet most of the money earned ultimately goes back to cricket’s richest nations. In the 2016-23 broadcasting cycle, in which the 2019 and 2023 World Cups are the centrepiece, the 93 associate nations stand to receive £175 m from the ICC – barely half as much as India alone, who receive £320 m. England receive the second most, £109 m.
So while the World Cup’s commercial benefits will be enjoyed throughout the world, they will be greatest in the nations who are already the sport’s wealthiest.
