How Jagmohan Dalmiya Commercialized Cricket (Part 2)

SM: Can you give me a little bit of business context in terms of Indian cricket?

JD: The Indian cricket business situation was very bad. The Indian government, specifically the Broadcasting Ministry, controlled the cricket telecasts. They did not compensate the BCCI for any rights associated with telecasts. In fact, it was exactly the opposite: they used to charge BCCI five lakhs per match shown on a telecast. Their rationale was that because the match was telecast, they felt the BCCI should be satisfied earning money from ground advertisements. Those advertisements brought in 20-25 lakhs per match, which we knew was not enough. The fact that we did nothing and refused to challenge the Broadcasting Ministry was very upsetting to me, but I was not in a position to challenge them initially.

SM: What year was that?

JD: That was in 1993, when we should have been making millions and millions. Instead, we lost seven lakhs that year.

SM: Because of this type of screwed-up business arrangement?

JD: Yes, but the history goes back further than that. In 1983, we won the Prudential World Cup. When we won everybody, was expecting monetary benefits. What was the result? We didn’t even have 10 lakhs in the coffers. I think we had two or three lakhs. Those were the days where the one lakh or two lakhs had value. We went to Lata Mangeshkar and asked her if she would do a benefit concert. We were ashamed we could not give any type of prize money to our players and we desperately wanted to raise some money so that we could do so.

SM: So Lata Mangeshkar helped you raise the money for the players!

JD: Exactly. It was very successful, 20 lakhs were raised from that show. Of those 20 lakhs each of the 14 players received one lakh. Fifty thousand rupees were given to the manager and 5 ½ lakhs were given to the Lata Mangeshkar fund so they could use it for scholarships.

SM: It is amazing to see how bad the financial situation was for Indian cricket!

JD: I think it was a result of bad management. Here is another story. The BCCI had a policy which said that they would never host a benefit match for anybody or for any reason. When I was serving in office, Lata Mangeshkar applied for a benefit match and the board declined. I was the president so I put my foot down and said, “What kind of nonsense is this? This is the time to pay back the debt! She gave us the opportunity for a second chance”. We had a very big discussion and I ultimately succeeded in getting the Lata Mangeshkar benefit match approved. I don’t remember the exact amount of money we brought in, I think it was a couple of crores. Paying that debt back to Lataji was one of the happiest moments of my life

This segment is part 2 in the series : How Jagmohan Dalmiya Commercialized Cricket
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