How Jagmohan Dalmiya Commercialized Cricket (Part 4)

SM: Can you talk about 1993 to 2008?

JD: That was a great time. It seemed that every day the situation improved.

SM: There was more competition for telecast rights and people were willing to pay more!

JD: Money was being thrown at us; nobody had to do anything. When we put telecast rights on the market now, we get bids for eight years at a time. We will not give more than two or three years at a time because the value is increasing so fast. When I was the president, telecast rights were fetching 700 crores ($161 million). By the end of my tenure, the offering price was 2,000 crores ($459 million). The last contract given under my tenure was for 3,500 crores ($803 million).

SM: Is this per year?

JD: Correct, telecast rights for one year. It is phenomenal what kind of money generated for a sport which is played in just seven countries.

SM: Were the telecast rights worldwide?

JD: They were, but our world was very small. It was not like FIFA. They get a lot more money than we do but in their case the rights are truly worldwide. We call ours worldwide but we are limited to seven countries. Additionally, the money is mostly in India. There is some money in the England and Australia markets, but that pales in comparison to what goes on in India.

SM: Let’s talk about ICC.

JD: When I became the president of ICC I knew nothing about their finances.

Internationally, monetization was only happening in India. I found, to my horror, that there was only £16,000 in the coffer. That’s all. It amazed me that an organization of that level would only have income of £181,000. There were nine full members. Each one contributed £10,000. All of the other small countries used to give £2,000 each. There were only three meetings a year where we had some cocktails, dinner and a lunch or two. We used to finish plus or minus £5,000 in any given year.

SM: Total financial mismanagement. Great.

JD: When I came and saw this, I knew we had to transform everything. My immediate stance was that we were not putting enough money into the sport and as a result cricket was not improving. I said our first budget would be $2.2 million for the next World Cup. They made fun of me. They never wanted a non-European as president, so there was some resistance as I was the first non-European serving in that role.

I was very stern and told everyone there that we would raise the money. Somebody said, “I will look into a potential deal with Disney World”. I knew right away that they were trying to take me for a ride. They were going to take their kids to Disney World for vacation; it had nothing to do with cricket.

Four months later we had our next meeting in Calcutta. It seemed like they were trying to create a mutiny, everyone was saying that they should never have listened to me. It was horrible. It was a wild goose chase. I announced that if they would give me seven days we would raise the money for the World Cup.

SM: So the budget for the World Cup is managed by the ICC?

JD: Yes, and apart from that there were needed improvements in coaching and umpiring. We needed money to do it. In order to bring more countries in we needed to improve top to bottom.

This segment is part 4 in the series : How Jagmohan Dalmiya Commercialized Cricket
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