By Avenash Ramzan
“We’re break-even now.”
That’s the word from Chief Operations Officer of the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), Pete Russell, on the day CPL announced its overall economic impact figures on the Caribbean for the 2019 tournament.
The 2019 event, which took place between September 4 and October 12, created a total economic impact of US$136,542,868 in the region, a 7.21% increase on the results from 2018.
This figure has been calculated using organiser spend, visitor spend and media value and was collated for the tournament by world-renowned researchers, YouGov Sport.
“We’re break-even now,” Russell told local media operatives at Providence on Friday. “Everything is moving in the right direction and that’s down to a lot of hard work from the commercial people. If you look at our TV numbers across the world, we’re now 312 million. Last year (2018) we were 210 million. That’s a massive leap.”
Russell reasoned that social media has had a huge impact on viewership and popularity, thereby sending the numbers up.
“In fact we met the head of Facebook India who said that our engagement figures were second best across all the Leagues, obviously IPL just because of the numbers and because it’s in India (is the leading League), but he said we’re not that far behind IPL and way ahead of any other league.”
In addition to that economic impact figure the Hero CPL employed more than 1,500 staff, filled 36,830 hotel rooms and saw an overall increase in arrivals into the host countries by those arriving to watch CPL 2019 matches.
The 34-match 2019 tournament took place in six Caribbean countries, with games taking place in Barbados, Guyana, Jamaica, St Kitts and Nevis, St Lucia and Trinidad and Tobago.
The tournament increased the positive economic impact it made on each of those countries in 2019 compared with the figures from 2018.
With regards to Guyana, the tournament created a total economic impact of US$29,514,926 in the country, a 15% increase on the results that were achieved during the 2018 event.
In addition to the economic impact figure, the tournament filled 7,664 hotel rooms in Guyana, saw an increase in overall arrivals into the country during the Hero CPL and 608 jobs were created.
Working closely with the local tourism authority, CPL also created content that showed why people should visit Guyana and experience the country.
“There is nothing like watching cricket in Guyana, and we were so pleased with how welcome we were made once again. The Guyanese economy is moving forward rapidly and we are very pleased to be playing our part in that success. We are already looking forward to putting on more matches of exciting cricket in the country in 2020.”
The window for the 2020 tournament is August 19 to September 26.
