I be­gin to­day’s Things That Mat­ter on a deeply painful per­son­al note: the un­ex­pect­ed death of my beloved younger broth­er Sean Pe­ter Cordell Lewis-Cox at 3.19 am on Sat­ur­day.

There are no words to ex­press our fam­i­ly’s and Sean’s friends’ pro­found sad­ness, grief and heart­bro­ken­ness at his un­time­ly pass­ing.

Bel­mont-born and grown, Sean worked at Massy Mo­tors for 30-some­thing years. Over the many years, he and I have had nu­mer­ous in­sight­ful dis­cus­sions about sport.

I ded­i­cate to­day’s Things That Mat­ter to him.

Rad­i­cal change is need­ed.

Dur­ing the 2025 na­tion­al elec­tion cam­paign, one of the glar­ing omis­sions in the po­lit­i­cal strate­gies and po­lit­i­cal de­bate were where hun­dreds of mil­lions were spent by the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties to sway vot­ers. Sport wasn’t high­light­ed in a sig­nif­i­cant way.

Sport didn’t mat­ter. When it should have. As the coun­try moves for­ward from yes­ter­day’s na­tion­al elec­tion.

I again urge a big au­da­cious vi­sion for sport that in­cludes cul­ture, en­ter­tain­ment, and in­no­va­tion. For years, I have ar­tic­u­lat­ed the im­por­tance of the sport in­dus­try.

I con­tin­ue to cham­pi­on sport and sus­tain­able in­vest­ment.

Sport for Trinidad and To­ba­go is an iden­ti­ty, a brand and a na­tion­al as­set.

I re­call in March 2018, dur­ing the third an­nu­al TTOC Sport In­dus­try Con­fer­ence, I made this as­ser­tion: it’s time for en­tre­pre­neur­ship in sport to be­come a se­ri­ous part of the pol­i­cy dis­course and ques­tioned why T&T had failed to lever­age the po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by the out­stand­ing achieve­ments of ath­letes and teams on the glob­al stage.

Sport has a key role in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my.

Dur­ing that con­fer­ence I asked this ques­tion: Why are we con­tin­u­ing to leave bil­lions of dol­lars on the ta­ble?

Un­like oth­er coun­tries that seek to di­ver­si­fy their econ­o­my, why is sport as an in­dus­try not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly here in the twin-is­land re­pub­lic?

As we talk about net for­eign ex­change, as we talk about em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion, why are we not em­brac­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty?”

The con­fer­ence was held un­der the theme “Rais­ing Aware­ness and En­cour­ag­ing En­tre­pre­neur­ship”.

Par­tic­i­pants en­gaged in a dis­cus­sion led by a cross-sec­tion of en­tre­pre­neurs in busi­ness, fi­nance, sport, law, me­dia and en­ter­tain­ment.

The four key top­ic ar­eas were “Cre­at­ing an En­tre­pre­neur­ial Eco-Sys­tem in Trinidad and To­ba­go”, “The Po­lit­i­cal and Le­gal En­vi­ron­ment that Fos­ters En­tre­pre­neur­ship”, “How Do Po­ten­tial Lenders and In­vestors Eval­u­ate the Busi­ness Plan?” and “Cre­at­ing Hu­man Con­nec­tions That Build Brands and Dri­ve Growth”.

A com­ment I made at that con­fer­ence that some with­in the lo­cal sports ecosys­tem took great um­brage with was this com­ment: “We need to move sport and the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing sport in Trinidad and To­ba­go from the ba­by bird ap­proach where we sit in the nests with our mouths open, wait­ing for mom­ma bird to drop food. We must em­brace the re­al­i­ty of the con­cept and have the con­fi­dence to be apex preda­tors.”

That par­tic­u­lar con­fer­ence was in March 2018. To­day, I have no qualms in re­vis­it­ing it.

The cur­rent sport sta­tus quo and op­er­at­ing en­vi­ron­ment are no longer fit for pur­pose.

Rad­i­cal change is need­ed.

In mov­ing for­ward from na­tion­al elec­tions 2025, rad­i­cal changes must be made in the way Trinidad and To­ba­go think about man­ag­ing and run­ning sport.

There will be those who will not see past the nar­row po­lit­i­cal lens or the cut and thrust of a bruis­ing and ruth­less po­lit­i­cal cam­paign and par­ty pol­i­tics.

How­ev­er, one’s con­sti­tu­tion­al right to free­dom of choice or free­dom of as­so­ci­a­tion is an en­shrined right.

Sport mat­ters re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal choic­es.