This is a special article co-authored by Sazzad Hossain, AVP & Ahraf Zahir, Junior Associate at LightCastle Partners.

1. The Crickonomics!
Is it the Beautiful Game or Just the Money?
The 2007 world cup was not a successful world cup by any means. The tournament dragged on
for close to two months, a lot of unnecessary matches were played and in the end, Australia quite
easily ran away with the trophy. However, the shock factor wasn’t the format or the lack of
competition; it was India getting knocked out in the group stages thanks to an emphatic victory
by Bangladesh.
India was and is the golden goose of advertisement when it comes to cricket. With more than 1
billion viewers who watch or play the game, the advertisers understand the importance of India
as a source of revenue. Hence, this World Cup format was revamped to ensure the big guns,
mainly Australia, England and India get to stay for a longer period in the World Cup, at least up
until the quarter finals, thus attracting higher advertising revenue. Although this raises issue of
fair play towards the teams in the lower end of the spectrum, the power money and influence
overwhelms the need for fair play and competitiveness.
Media and Sponsorship Rights: Play it in Millions and Billions
ESPN-STAR brought the broadcasting rights for nearly $2 billion to predominantly broadcast in
the subcontinent, which comprises of majority of the cricket watching nation. The opening match
of Pool B between India and Pakistan had 1 billion people tuning into their television sets, and
hence the prospect of earning is significant. ICC expects a revenue generation of close to $200
million, bulk of which will come from sponsorship and TV rights.

2. The earnings from sponsors are shared with member countries of ICC. The giants of the game –
BCCI, CA and ECB get the lion’s share of any revenue generated by ICC from major events. The
income gap has become more prominent in recent years since BCCI contributes up to 75% of
ICC’s expenses and also generates up to 60-70% revenue of ICC alone. The commercial pull that
India and BCCI have also justifies the revamping of the format of the World Cup to keep the Big
Three in the tournament for as long as possible.
Impact on the Trans-Tasman Economy
This World Cup is co-hosted by Australia and New Zealand across 14 venues. Therefore, in order
to make travelling easier, both countries have ensured a streamlined visa processing service
which will ensure more tourists from different countries fetching about a profit of $200 million,
according to several press reports. Interestingly, it is substantially low from the profit of $320
million earned during the 2011 edition hosted in this part of the world this area makes up almost
two third of the cricket viewing population in the world.
New Zealand expects 400,000 tickets to be sold with 30,000 visitors coming in, mostly from India
and England. For a small country like New Zealand, the exposure that they will get from constant
advertising will have a far reaching financial windfall. Interestingly though, New Zealand Tourism
Industry Association chief executive Chris Roberts believes that it’s the Chinese new Year and not
the Cricket World Cup that will bring in more travelers to New Zealand. The overall impact on the
hotel business of New Zealand will be positive with close to 100% occupancy rate during the
World Cup, with an average revenue of $109, it is sure to have a positive impact on the economy.
As for Australia, conservative estimate is that close to 50,000 people will arrive for the Cricket
world cup. Major Australian cities are experiencing an average of 7% growth in occupancy rates.
ICC estimates ticket sales to be cross the 1 million mark, which will boost up Cricket Australia’s
earning to close to 300 million AUD.
Cricket: A Form of Sports or a Lucrative Profession?
ICC has declared winning prize money of $4 million, an increase of 20% from the 2011 edition.
The breakdown of prize money is given in the table below:

3. This table shows that even if a team loses every single match in the group stages, they will still
earn $35,000, meaning, even if Bangladesh fails to win a single group stage match, each of the
players including the standby players will earn not less than BDT 150,000 - an amount equal to
monthly salary of a mid-level multi-national corporate professional here in Bangladesh. Besides,
there are other scopes of earning related to bonus, performance bonus and various other
bonuses. As for the winning team, if they go on to win every single match en route to winning
the cup, will end up earning $4,020,000.
So, students can seriously consider the cricketing career as a profession as there are national and
international tournaments and bi/tri-lateral series other than the world cup. And, obviously there
are the T-20 tournaments like BPL, IPL and Big Bash where cricketers can earn money as much as
NBA players do in the US.
World Cup: The Bangladeshi Dream
So how will the world cup affect the tigers, in terms of finance? In terms of earnings, by
conservative estimate, Bangladesh has the potential to earn $125,000, if they manage to beat
the associate teams and end up losing to the other 4 teams. There is cautious optimism regarding
Bangladesh being able to reach the Quarters, which would need the Tigers to beat the two
associate nations and one of Sri Lanka or England. If the Tigers can go through to the Quarters
and lose, they’ll end up with a pot of $435,000. And obviously, there are 160 million people here
in Bangladesh praying for the tigers, what other motivation can be bigger than this?
Author: This Article is co-authored by Sazzad Hossain & Ahraf Zahir.