The over­whelm­ing feel­ing is pride and achieve­ment as we look back on 10 years of the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL). The tour­na­ment is the sec­ond most-watched T20 league in the world, with a well-earned rep­u­ta­tion for qual­i­ty crick­et and fan ex­pe­ri­ence.

The Biggest Par­ty in Sport is a tagline that sets the stan­dard very high, and fans across the Caribbean have played their part in mak­ing it a re­al­i­ty. I have been lucky enough to watch crick­et world­wide, and the roar you hear at a CPL match com­petes with any sta­di­um from around the globe.

The COVID-19 pan­dem­ic made things dif­fi­cult for all of us, and it cre­at­ed a very dif­fer­ent CPL in 2020 and 2021.

The com­plete lack of fans in Trinidad in 2020 and a re­duced ca­pac­i­ty in St Kitts in 2021, meant it was a strange ex­pe­ri­ence for those of us who are used to pump­ing crowds at CPL match­es. So, to see them re­turn in 2022, along with the tour­na­ment vis­it­ing more than one host coun­try, was the per­fect way to cel­e­brate 10 years of CPL

Plan­ning is well un­der­way for the 2023 tour­na­ment, but the time is right for some ret­ro­spec­tion and a look at some of the suc­cess­es. Three con­sec­u­tive years of a to­tal view­er­ship of over half a bil­lion, with a record 721.8 mil­lion in 2022. Close to a bil­lion US dol­lars of eco­nom­ic im­pact on the re­gion while pro­vid­ing a plat­form for the re­gion’s best crick­eters to show­case what they are ca­pa­ble of be­fore go­ing on to achieve suc­cess else­where in the world.

And it isn’t just on the field that CPL has of­fered the op­por­tu­ni­ty for young peo­ple to set a plat­form for suc­cess. For ex­am­ple, CPL has had a long and suc­cess­ful as­so­ci­a­tion with The Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI) to of­fer in­tern­ships to tal­ent­ed stu­dents to take part in the plan­ning and ex­e­cu­tion of the event. As a re­sult, many of these stu­dents have re­turned to work with the CPL in paid roles, and oth­ers have suc­ceed­ed in jour­nal­ism, sports mar­ket­ing, and oth­er as­so­ci­at­ed in­dus­tries.

One of the CPL’s great strengths is con­stant­ly striv­ing for big­ger and bet­ter, and in 2022 ,this was demon­strat­ed with the launch of two ad­di­tion­al events. First, the launch of the 6IX­TY, a T10 tour­na­ment, a joint ven­ture be­tween CPL and Crick­et West In­dies (CWI), lays an ex­cel­lent foun­da­tion for a sec­ond decade of suc­cess. Sec­ond­ly, the Women’s Caribbean Pre­mier League (WC­PL) pro­vid­ed re­gion­al and in­ter­na­tion­al women crick­eters an op­por­tu­ni­ty to show­case their skills and ex­pe­ri­ence the CPL’s ex­cite­ment. Fans can look for­ward to an ex­pand­ed WC­PL in 2023 as well as the num­ber of venues that the tour­na­ment vis­its in­creas­ing.

We will strive to im­prove the fan ex­pe­ri­ence and en­sure that the qual­i­ty of crick­et is of the high­est stan­dard. We will con­tin­ue work­ing with tourism boards across the re­gion to sell the Caribbean as a must-vis­it des­ti­na­tion to our vast glob­al au­di­ence. We will con­tin­ue pos­i­tive­ly im­pact­ing the re­gion by cre­at­ing jobs, fill­ing ho­tel rooms, and at­tract­ing vis­i­tors to CPL match­es.

We are al­so con­tin­u­ing to firm up and ex­pand our part­ner­ship with The UWI. For ex­am­ple, in 2022, we cre­at­ed a Sport Mar­ket­ing Course that saw stu­dents gain cer­ti­fi­ca­tion and par­tic­i­pate in an in­tern­ship pro­gramme. The pi­lot was a huge suc­cess, with stu­dents in St Kitts & Nevis, Saint Lu­cia, Trinidad & To­ba­go and Guyana par­tic­i­pat­ing. The plan is for this to be ex­pand­ed in scope and scale in fu­ture years, as CPL looks to in­vest in young peo­ple across the Caribbean.

The plan for the in­tern­ships in 2023 is to give the stu­dents in­volved an even more round­ed ex­pe­ri­ence at the tour­na­ment with the chance to spend time with the teams run­ning crick­et op­er­a­tions, spon­sor­ship, so­cial me­dia, mar­ket­ing, and pub­lic re­la­tions.

It is the du­ty of all those who op­er­ate in the Caribbean to do what they can to up­skill the next gen­er­a­tion, not least be­cause this is the best way to fu­ture-proof your busi­ness. There­fore, we look for­ward to re­ceiv­ing ap­pli­ca­tions for the 2023 UWI-CPL Sport Mar­ket­ing course and work­ing with the in­terns from that pro­gramme.

Pe­ter Miller is the head of PR and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the Caribbean Pre­mier League