Vin­ode Mam­chan

Own­ers of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) have asked Gov­ern­ment to pay US$4.5 mil­lion for T&T to host the semi­fi­nals and fi­nal of the event here from Au­gust 3-6.

How­ev­er, sources say that while Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is con­vinced that stag­ing the three main match­es here will gen­er­ate sub­stan­tial ben­e­fits for the coun­try, he is not will­ing to pay that price and is in­sist­ing on re-ne­go­ti­a­tions to bring the cost in line with what the coun­try can af­ford.

Last year, the PP gov­ern­ment spent US$3.5 mil­lion and there was mas­sive in­ter­est and sold out crowds for the fi­nal which was won by the lo­cal Red Steel, which beat Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents in the fi­nal at the Queen's Park Oval.

T&T is fac­ing com­pe­ti­tion from the gov­ern­ments of Bar­ba­dos and Guyana, as they have both made pre­sen­ta­tions to CPL own­ers, but ne­go­ti­a­tions are still on­go­ing with the three coun­tries.

It is un­der­stood that T&T has pro­posed a counter of­fer of US$1.5 mil­lion. Sources say that Gov­ern­ment may agree to US$2 mil­lion.

The CPL has pro­vid­ed a re­port pre­pared by SMG In­sight on the eco­nom­ic im­pact of last year's fi­nal.

SMG In­sight rea­soned that by host­ing last year's event, Trinidad & To­ba­go got sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic and so­cial ben­e­fits, which in­clud­ed the di­rect spend by CPL from ho­tel to lo­cal ven­dors, trav­el, me­dia and ad­ver­tis­ing.

The to­tal di­rect im­pact of the 2015 tour­na­ment for the T&T econ­o­my was stat­ed as US$15.40 mil­lion. This was bro­ken down in­to the di­rect spend by CPL which was US$3.84 mil­lion, ac­com­mo­da­tion and gen­er­al ex­pen­di­ture was list­ed at US$5.63 mil­lion, and val­ue pro­duced by the T&T Tourist Board brand­ing at match­es was put at US$5.93 mil­lion.

The pro­pos­al al­so out­lined to Gov­ern­ment that a to­tal of 93,929 fans at­tend­ed the match­es in this coun­try and as a re­sult 551 jobs were cre­at­ed. In ad­di­tion to this a tele­vi­sion au­di­ence of 27.3 mil­lion viewed the games, and a to­tal of 5,703 nights were spent by non-lo­cal spec­ta­tors at the ho­tels in Trinidad.

Guardian sources say Gov­ern­ment has not giv­en up and will con­tin­ue to ne­go­ti­ate.

"At this point, we are con­fi­dent that the match­es will come our way as there are many ways for the CPL to fit the dif­fer­ence for what they are ask­ing. Gov­ern­ment un­der­stands the im­por­tance of host­ing an event of this mag­ni­tude and hence ne­go­ti­a­tions are far from over."

The Queen's Park Oval host­ed the fi­nal of the first edi­tion in 2013, and last year's edi­tion.