KINGSTON, Ja­maica - Ja­maica’s Sports Min­is­ter, Olivia Grange, has re­vealed that Kings­men Sports En­ter­prise is set to in­vest over US$3 mil­lion to es­tab­lish new fran­chis­es in the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) and Women’s Caribbean Pre­mier League (WC­PL) com­pe­ti­tions.

The Unit­ed States-based Kings­men, owned by Pak­istan-born busi­ness­man Fawad Sar­war, has com­mit­ted an­nu­al in­vest­ments of US$2.75 mil­lion to op­er­ate a pro­fes­sion­al men’s team as well as US$500,000 to es­tab­lish and op­er­ate a pro­fes­sion­al women’s CPL team.

Grange made the an­nounce­ments dur­ing a re­cent meet­ing of Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee, which ex­am­ined the 2026-27 Es­ti­mates of Ex­pen­di­ture ahead of the Bud­get de­bate, which gets un­der way on Tues­day.

Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the min­is­ter stat­ed that the CPL had de­cid­ed to waive fees for Ja­maica’s home games at Sabi­na Park this year, as the coun­try was still re­cov­er­ing from the dev­as­ta­tion of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa.

“With the re­turn of the Ja­maica-based fran­chise, four match­es are sched­uled to be played at the icon­ic Sabi­na Park, mark­ing the re­turn of CPL match­es to Ja­maica for the first time since 2019.

“CPL will waive the fee this year, which is nor­mal­ly a part of the host agree­ment, in con­sid­er­a­tion of Hur­ri­cane Melis­sa and its im­pact on the coun­try. There­fore, Ja­maica’s in­put will be pri­mar­i­ly val­ued in kind,” Grange said.

The min­is­ter said Kings­man Sports En­ter­prise had al­so com­mit­ted to fo­cus­ing on grass­roots crick­et pro­grammes for the youth.

Grange said de­tails will be worked out joint­ly and will in­volve col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Ja­maican gov­ern­ment and cor­po­rate stake­hold­ers to de­liv­er mea­sur­able ben­e­fits.

She al­so dis­closed that the Kings­man had promised to in­vest in sport­ing in­fra­struc­ture to po­si­tion Ja­maica as a hub for elite T20 crick­et and to en­sure glob­al ex­po­sure.

CMC