What The Royals' Franchise Concept Could Mean For Cricket
Andy Bull
09 February 2010
The times they are a-changin'. If you hadn't noticed yet, the latest
clue came at Lord's yesterday. There, over the course of five long
hours of PowerPoint presentations and other PR shenanigans, the
Rajasthan Royals launched their new global franchise, Royals2020.
There are at least nine words in that last sentence that will be so
soul-wearying to many cricket fans that they may well have stopped
reading already. I sympathise. The state of the sport has been in
perpetual revolution for too long now. Phrases like 'PowerPoint' and
'PR shenanigans' should not be getting space among the cricket column
inches. But this is not the time to be burying your head in the sand.
How did the man Dylan put it? "He that gets hurt will be he who has
stalled."
Just ask the county chairmen, an array of whom have, according to
sources, been wintering in India, negotiating deals like the one
announced by Hampshire's Rod Bransgrove. Anyone who does not
appreciate the full significance of yesterday's developments should
look a little closer and think a little harder, even if the
conclusions leave you in a state of mild despair about the future.
To briefly recap, Rajasthan have expanded their franchise, entering
into partnership with Hampshire, the Cape Cobras and Trinidad &
Tobago. The Victoria Bushrangers are still in negotiations. Those
teams will now all play in identical kit under the name 'Royals', and
share revenues, players and expertise.
They will also play in a series of festivals against each other,
across the world and throughout the calendar. The first is due,
supposedly, to take place in England this July. This is an especially
mischievous move. There is a temptation, eloquently expressed by
Andrew Miller on Cricinfo (
http://www.cricinfo.com/magazine/conten … 47511.html ), to see
this as the cricketing equivalent of town-twinning, enabling little
more than the erection of a signpost on the city limits and a series
of pupil - or in this case player - exchange schemes.
It is far more important than that. This is not sports administration,
this is big business, being played for multi-million dollar stakes.
The people who run things now wear sharp suits, not blazers, and they
are in it for the money, not because they have nothing better to do
in retirement. Rajasthan did not even notify the ECB that they were
about to plop a three-day Twenty20 tournament down in the middle of
the English season. They would have known that by doing so, they were
setting the cat among the pigeons.
They are laying stake to a chunk of the English cricket market in the
high season - days before the start of the first Test against
Pakistan, and at the very same time as the domestic Twenty20
quarter-finals. Savvy operators as they are, I would wager Rajasthan
deliberately used the description 'festival' to soften the blow.
Their chairman Manoj Badale, co-founder of the investment group
Blenheim Chalcott, is a shrewd man, and was quick to make
conciliatory noises, saying the biggest obstacle the project faced
was "ensuring our interfaces with the cricket boards are what they
should be". Giving them five months' notice of a new Twenty20
tournament in their own backyard - Rajasthan were "90% confident"
that Lord's would be available as a venue - seems a strange way to do
that.
Middlesex and Leicestershire were also believed to have been in
negotiations to join the Royals. While in India, Delhi and Kolkata
are reportedly looking for partners in England who can offer
Test-sized grounds and large local British-Asian populations. If the
Royals festival goes ahead, every franchise will be demanding an
equivalent slot. Those three days will mushroom into a much larger
slice of the season, squeezing out the ECB's domestic competition.
The MCC - which must approve any match played at Lord's - was far from
confident about the prospect of hosting the festival. Even Bransgrove
hedged his words slightly about using the Rose Bowl as a venue,
saying there were "a couple of hurdles to be overcome." In fact,
there is hardly even a window at the end of July at all. The Rose
Bowl is due to host a four-day match between India A and New Zealand
A from the 23 to the 27, and Hampshire are playing on 25 and 29 July
The quarter-finals of the ECB's redesigned Twenty20 Cup are on 25 and
26 July. If the ECB refuses Rajasthan permission for the festival -
as seems inevitable - then, at the very least, the IPL franchises
will have won a bargaining chip to crack open space elsewhere in the
calendar. This is part of a battle for control of cricket's calendar.
The Board's position will also be weakened by the fact that, if the
franchise gambit pays off, the counties which are involved will
potentially be financially independent of the ECB. Never mind control
over the course of the global game, the ECB may find itself in a
struggle for authority over what's happening inside its own borders.
No wonder Badale was being so diplomatic about what, in another
light, could be seen as an explicitly aggressive move on the English
market.
As well as creating more product for Indian TV, the other great
advantage of the new franchise system is in extending the marketing
reach of the teams. In the future IPL sides will be negotiating
sponsorship rights not only in India, but in five major markets
across the world.
The deal raises the prospect of five teams - all named the Royals -
reaching the Champions League. If you need an idea of just how
important that fledgling competition is to the financial futures of
the English counties, just take a look at some of the overseas
signings made this winter: Adam Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi, Cameron
White. If all five Royals sides reached the competition, and Badale
says it is "when not if", then they would split any players who are
being shared between them on an ad hoc basis ("based on common sense"
said captain-coach Shane Warne). They would also be putting all the
winnings into a central pool and dividing them five ways.
The pioneer years of Twenty20 are over. For the counties it is time to
start swimming or sink like a stone. The IPL teams' revenues are
hindered by one obvious problem - they only play for a tiny fraction
of the year. All of the franchises will, naturally, be looking to
expand to become year-round operations. That is the natural course of
remorseless profit-logic, and the biggest single force for change in
cricket at the moment.
