A loud cheer rang out on the night of March 30 when pres­i­dent of Guyana Dr Mo­hamed Ir­faan Ali an­nounced his coun­try had com­mit­ted to host­ing the Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) T20 fi­nals for the next three years.

Hav­ing been there be­fore, T&T’s CPL fans know the ec­sta­sy of se­cur­ing such fi­nals.

The tour­na­ment has be­come huge­ly pop­u­lar in both coun­tries.

The fran­chise rep­re­sent­ing T&T, the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR), has won the ti­tle four times.

And the fi­nals have been held in T&T on six oc­ca­sions, four times at the Bri­an Lara sta­di­um and twice at the Queen’s Park Oval.

The Guyana Ama­zon War­riors fran­chise has made five fi­nals, al­beit, with­out ever win­ning the tro­phy.

None of the nine tour­na­ment fi­nals was ever held in Guyana.

But that is now about to change.

This Sep­tem­ber, Guyana will host the fi­nal for the first time.

The long-term stag­ing agree­ment will see the cul­mi­na­tion of the tour­na­ment al­so tak­ing place in Guyana in 2023 and 2024.

How­ev­er, be­yond the cheers of crick­et fans, such a long-term com­mit­ment and deep in­vest­ment by Guyana goes well be­yond the crick­et field.

It is un­der­stood that T&T paid US$1 mil­lion each of the three years it host­ed the CPL fi­nals be­tween 2018 and 2020. The pay­ment was both in cash and in kind.

Yet, the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic shows the risks in­volved in mak­ing such long-term de­ci­sions and com­mit­ments.

In 2020, the en­tire tour­na­ment was played in a bub­ble in Trinidad and no fans were al­lowed to watch TKR go the en­tire tour­na­ment un­beat­en, a first in the com­pe­ti­tion’s his­to­ry.

The CPL gave the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian an in­sight in­to what goes in­to such de­ci­sions.

Pe­te Rus­sell, its CEO, said, “There is in­tense com­pe­ti­tion for the right to host the clos­ing stages of the tour­na­ment for ob­vi­ous rea­sons and CPL needs to con­sid­er both short-term (fi­nan­cial) and long-term (brand) ob­jec­tives. Guyana has a clear plan on how they will use CPL to build a new en­ter­tain­ment prod­uct–Crick­et Car­ni­val–that will be for the ben­e­fit of every­one over the next three years.”

The Guyana gov­ern­ment is adamant the ben­e­fits of such an in­vest­ment (which Rus­sell says spe­cif­ic num­bers are “nev­er dis­cussed”) must bear fruit for more than just the crick­et­ing fra­ter­ni­ty in the coun­try.

“We want the en­tire re­gion to be pros­per­ous, and we are build­ing some­thing here to bring the re­gion to­geth­er. So, what you will see is a plan that will bring the best car­ni­val bands in the re­gion on the shores of Guyana in a clash of the Car­ni­val cham­pi­ons from Mi­a­mi, T&T, Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, Brazil, Guyana. We will bring them to­geth­er on the shores of Guyana in the grand event in the re­gion, the Crick­et Car­ni­val 2022,” Ali said.

Pres­i­dent Ali an­nounced at the launch on March 30 the Crick­et Car­ni­val will fea­ture a re­gion­al food fes­ti­val, a re­gion­al as well as an in­ter­na­tion­al con­cert and a Guyana Night. The coun­try’s Min­istry of Tourism is work­ing on launch­ing a spe­cial CPL Crick­et Car­ni­val Cruise to Guyana to help peo­ple who might have prob­lems get­ting flights to the two weeks of ac­tiv­i­ties.

Ali urged all of Guyana to be part of wel­com­ing the rest of the world to the event which will be a new prod­uct for the coun­try.

“Crick­et is much more than a game for us in Guyana, it is a pas­sion, part of our cul­ture and a uni­fy­ing force. As we cel­e­brate One Guyana, the host­ing of the CPL fi­nal will be an en­er­gis­ing force. We are build­ing a prod­uct that will be spec­ta­tor fo­cused, in­te­grat­ed with our re­gion­al part­ners for a glob­al mar­ket. Crick­et Car­ni­val is a fu­sion of en­ter­tain­ment and cel­e­bra­tion that will be mind blow­ing and un­be­liev­ably dif­fer­ent from any oth­er glob­al crick­et­ing event. We wel­come all to the great­est cel­e­bra­tion of mu­sic, pageantry, Caribbean vibes with a South Amer­i­can touch and, of course, crick­et played loud­est,” Ali stat­ed.

What Guyana is do­ing with its in­vest­ment is lever­ag­ing it, some­thing Kur­tis Rudd, the CEO of Tourism Trinidad Ltd (TTL), says is crit­i­cal.

“It’s not just a case of putting out that mon­ey and in­vest­ing, you have to lever­age it as well. You can’t just spon­sor an event and say you are a spon­sor, you have to in­vest prob­a­bly equal amount of mon­ey, time and re­sources in that spon­sor­ship val­ue to lever­ag­ing and ac­ti­vat­ing the event,” Rudd told the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian.

TTL was heav­i­ly in­volved in mar­ket­ing T&T to the world dur­ing the years in which the fi­nals were played in this coun­try. He said even when the tour­na­ment was rel­e­gat­ed to a bio-se­cure bub­ble in 2020 be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, num­bers were still on their side.

“The spon­sor­ship val­ue that we would have got­ten from that was worth over US$51 mil­lion,” Rudd said.

While many coun­tries around the world face eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, Guyana is pro­ject­ed to ex­pand by 49.7 per cent this year, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est edi­tion of the World Bank’s Glob­al Eco­nom­ic Prospects.

With such news, Guyana will be com­pet­ing against the re­gion well off the field.

Rudd added, “It is no se­cret that we com­pete in the Caribbean in terms of our sports, beach­es, Car­ni­val, and Guyana has made a bold state­ment in com­pet­ing, I guess, for the sports cap­i­tal of the re­gion.”

While Guyana has nev­er host­ed the fi­nals of the CPL be­fore, of­fi­cials seem bent on build­ing (and per­haps bet­ter­ing) on the ex­pe­ri­ences from fi­nals in Trinidad.

Rudd said, “Guyana would have seen the val­ue that we would have got­ten from host­ing the CPL. There is no one who can claim Car­ni­val in sports like us but they’ve un­der­stood that mod­el that we would have de­vel­oped and tried to build on it.”

Rudd says the op­por­tu­ni­ty for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion is there with the CPL.

He con­firmed in 2019, 489 jobs were cre­at­ed in T&T. There was a to­tal of 10,642 room nights, 3,500 Caribbean at­ten­dees vis­it­ed T&T for the match­es while 1,010 in­ter­na­tion­al tourists came to our shores.

The coun­try al­so got 461 hours of brand ex­po­sure. Aware of this, Guyana, which can now af­ford to host the biggest par­ty in sport, seems will­ing to use it to dri­ve its econ­o­my in a more di­ver­si­fied di­rec­tion.

This sea­son, Guyana will host sev­en group games, three knock­out match­es and the Hero CPL fi­nal which will take place on Fri­day Sep­tem­ber 30 at The Guyana Na­tion­al Sta­di­um in Prov­i­dence.

Last year’s en­tire CPL tour­na­ment was held at Warn­er Park, Bas­seterre, St Kitts & Nevis.

Ac­cord­ing to the CPL the to­tal val­ue de­liv­ered to St Kitts & Nevis from the 2021 Hero CPL was US$88.7 mil­lion.

“This fig­ure comes from or­gan­is­er spend, vis­i­tor spend and spon­sor­ship val­ue. The re­port de­tail­ing all the de­liv­er­ables was com­piled by in­de­pen­dent and world-lead­ing re­search com­pa­ny, YouGov Sport,” it stat­ed.

“The to­tal eco­nom­ic im­pact val­ue for St Kitts & Nevis was US$8,990,210, with the di­rect spend be­ing US$3,329,707. This fig­ure takes in­to ac­count the to­tal spent by Hero CPL to put on the 2021 event as well as the mon­ey spent with lo­cal busi­ness by those who trav­elled in­to St Kitts & Nevis for the tour­na­ment, ei­ther in­de­pen­dent­ly or as part of CPL’s fran­chise teams,” it stat­ed.

The to­tal spent to or­gan­ise the CPL in St Kitts & Nevis dur­ing the tour­na­ment was US$2,250,725 with lo­cal sup­pli­ers and busi­ness­es be­ing the ben­e­fi­cia­ries.

“St Kitts and Nevis al­so en­joyed huge ex­po­sure from the glob­al broad­cast of the tour­na­ment, a spon­sor­ship val­ue of US$79,707,790 be­ing gen­er­at­ed; the most any host coun­try has ever re­ceived. A com­bi­na­tion of in­no­v­a­tive and en­gag­ing ad­ver­tis­ing through­out the Hero CPL broad­cast, in­clud­ing brand­ing and tourism vi­gnettes, en­sured St Kitts & Nevis was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to pro­mote it­self to a vast glob­al au­di­ence,” it stat­ed.

The to­tal view­er­ship fig­ure for CPL 2021 was 517.4 mil­lion, with the tour­na­ment pass­ing half a bil­lion view­ers for the sec­ond suc­ces­sive year.