Caribbean crick­eters, those from the crick­et­ing world and the fran­chise teams of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL), pro­vide great en­joy­ment to fans lo­cal­ly and on world­wide tele­vi­sion. In ad­di­tion to the ex­cit­ing na­ture of the T20 for­mat, the tour­na­ment pro­vides a great source of in­come to play­ers, fran­chise own­ers, the tele­vi­sion cir­cuit, coach­es, man­agers and ad­min­is­tra­tive staff of the teams.

The ques­tion is, what does the tour­na­ment do for the eco­nom­ic and so­cial ad­vance­ment of the Caribbean na­tions which host what is an ob­vi­ous spec­ta­cle of crick­et?

Won­der­ful en­ter­tain­ment is had as fans feel ex­cit­ed and nour­ished by their teams and na­tion­al play­ers, and al­so en­joy the op­por­tu­ni­ty to see and en­joy many of the best play­ers in the world in the short­ened for­mat of the game. For many, wav­ing, jump­ing for joy and com­ing in­to close con­tact with their own and in­ter­na­tion­al play­ers, are amongst the great­est of ben­e­fits; and T20 has brought a whole new kind of spec­ta­tor in­to the old game.

How­ev­er, as in­di­cat­ed by a cur­so­ry check on­line about the own­er­ship of the fran­chise teams, they are all for­eign owned. So too is the tele­vi­sion cov­er­age.

We in the re­gion can on­ly have praise for the group­ings of busi­ness in­vestors who have tak­en the risk of putting their funds in­to a sport­ing ven­ture in­tent on re­ceiv­ing re­turns, if not im­me­di­ate­ly, sure­ly over the medi­um to long-term; that’s the na­ture of such in­vest­ment.

The ques­tion be­ing asked here is, what of lo­cal and re­gion­al cap­i­tal to be in­vest­ed to cre­ate new fran­chise teams? Is it that this kind of in­vest­ment in­to large-scale, long-term busi­ness ven­tures is seen by the re­gion­al busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty as be­ing too large and risky? If so, it con­tin­ues the na­ture of West In­di­an eco­nom­ic un­der-de­vel­op­ment in which large and green-ven­ture cap­i­tal has come from abroad; risk-tak­ing has not been a fea­ture of Caribbean in­vestors.

There sure­ly are a few large re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions which have gone abroad with in­vest­ment in parts of the Unit­ed States, Latin Amer­i­ca and con­ti­nen­tal Eu­rope. How­ev­er, the num­bers are few, leav­ing be­hind timid­ly, cap­i­tal and in­vestors un­will­ing to take on the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of build­ing the na­tion­al and re­gion­al economies from ven­tures right at home.

In this re­spect, there is lit­tle dif­fer­ence in the na­ture of to­day’s West In­di­an econ­o­my com­pared to that of the plan­ta­tion econ­o­my, which was owned abroad, with the ma­jor fi­nan­cial ben­e­fits nat­u­ral­ly flow­ing to the own­ers in the metro­pole. If there is no one re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tion to take on the ven­ture of own­ing a CPL fran­chise team, the pur­pose of the pro­jec­tion of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my is for such in­vest­ment to be en­gaged on a re­gion­al ba­sis.

Un­de­ni­ably, T20 crick­et, its style, its ad­ven­ture and the trans­for­ma­tion of the ap­proach to the game, were all cre­at­ed by our West In­di­an crick­eters who brought their in­nate abil­i­ties, pas­sion and style to the for­mat. It is now ab­solute­ly re­quired for the cor­po­ra­tions and gov­ern­ments to cap­i­talise on those tal­ents through fi­nan­cial in­vest­ment and en­tre­pre­neur­ship of re­gion­al in­vestors.

Our busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, the re­gion­al cor­po­rate world and the gov­ern­ments of mem­ber states must, how­ev­er, now come to­geth­er to re­alise the ob­jec­tives of the CSME to take ad­van­tage of an in­dige­nous prod­uct.