With money already at a minimum the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) will find it even more difficult to run the game in the region, as funds continue to dry up.
The organization latest stream of revenue to run dry is the Champions League fees. Of course no fault of their own, the Champions League has been scrapped by the three ruling bodies, the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), Cricket Australia (CA) and Cricket South Africa (CSA).
Under the arrangement from the three associations that ran the Champions League, each of the cricket boards that had representation at the tournament got US$500,000.
President of the T&T Cricket Board (TTCB), Azim Bassarath told T&T Guardian that the WICB had an arrangement with the territorial boards that the monies will be split 50-50 when the WICB ran the regional T20 tournament. T&T went to four of the six Champions League and hence benefitted the most amongst the six regional territories. Guyana was represented at the event once, while under the Caribbean Premier League (CPL), Barbados Tridents went once.
With the new arrangement with the CPL, the WICB would have gotten the entire US$500,000 and this obtained last year when the Tridents went to the tournament in India.
A major portion, over 65% of the money that the WICB earned was channelled towards development in the territories with the remainder retained by the board.
Recently CEO of the WICB Michael Muirhead was quoted on Cricinfo as saying: "The WICB was also concerned about the impact on domestic teams. "It's what funds the region will be devoid of, not the board. Everything does not just go in the WICB coffers as that money has to be shared. You can't just say what money the board will be missing out on."
The Champions League was scrapped because the organisers thought that it was not catching on with the fans and also sponsors. They found it to be costly to keep on the calendar and with the BCCI losing funds as the major partner, they decided to put a stop to it.
There has been talk of a mini IPL coming on stream with matches to be played in Dubai, United Arab Emirates but the BCCI has not announced anything concrete on the matter. It would involve the top four teams of the IPL playing for the title.
During the Champions League the number of IPL teams used in the tournament was always a major talking point among other cricketing countries who thought that there were too many teams coming from India.