Vin­ode Mam­chan

Af­ter much spec­u­la­tion as to where the fi­nals of the 2016 Hero Caribbean Pre­mier League T20 tour­na­ment will take place, news com­ing to hand is that it will go South to Guyana this time around.

Guardian Me­dia was re­li­ably in­formed that the gov­ern­ment of Guyana has out­done the gov­ern­ments of T&T and Bar­ba­dos in a three-way bid to host the fi­nals on Au­gust 7. Guyana will al­so host both se­mi-fi­nals which will take place at Prov­i­dence Sta­di­um.

Ac­cord­ing to a source close to the Guyana gov­ern­ment, the deal has been struck and it will be made pub­lic in a few days time. The source did not give par­tic­u­lars about the agree­ment be­tween the par­ties, but the CPL or­ga­niz­ers were ask­ing for US$4.5M (G$932.4mil­lion) for the award of the fi­nal-four.

It will be the first time that the fi­nals will be host­ed in Guyana, as the three pre­vi­ous fi­nals took place in T&T (2) and St. Kitts. Last year, the PP gov­ern­ment in­vest­ed US$3.5 mil­lion (TT$24 mil­lion) and there was mas­sive in­ter­est and sold out crowds for the fi­nal which was won by the lo­cal Red Steel team (now re­named the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers), which beat Bar­ba­dos Tri­dents in the fi­nal at the Queen's Park Oval.

It is un­der­stood that T&T pro­posed a counter of­fer of US$1.5 mil­lion (TT$9.8 mil­lion) and was will­ing to go up to US$2 mil­lion, but this was not suc­cess­ful. The Guyana gov­ern­ment would have been swayed by the re­port pro­vid­ed by SMG In­sight on the eco­nom­ic im­pact of last year's fi­nal.

SMG In­sight rea­soned that by host­ing last year's event, T&T 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 all gov­ern­ments that a to­tal of 93,929 fans at­tend­ed the match­es in T&T and as a re­sult 551 jobs were cre­at­ed. In ad­di­tion, a tele­vi­sion au­di­ence of 27.3 mil­lion per­sons viewed the games, and a to­tal of 5,703 nights were spent by non-lo­cal spec­ta­tors at the ho­tels in T&T.