Brent San­cho, a for­mer Min­is­ter of Sports and Youth Af­fairs, is propos­ing changes at sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties that will re­dound to more rev­enue for the cen­tral gov­ern­ment and com­mer­cial­i­sa­tion of sports in T&T.

San­cho, a for­mer na­tion­al de­fend­er who is ru­moured to be a high-pro­file mem­ber of the Board of Di­rec­tors at the Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T (SporTT) when it is se­lect­ed, is well-trav­elled, hav­ing been a mem­ber/work­er for foot­ball's world gov­ern­ing body- FI­FA.

On Thurs­day, he told Guardian Me­dia Sports that sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties in T&T need to be self-suf­fi­cient, not­ing that they can no longer be a drain on the purse of gov­ern­ment.

The idea could lead to a par­a­digm shift in sports in T&T, San­cho be­lieves, point­ing to the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, Mu­cu­rapo, Port-of-Spain and the Ato Boldon Sta­di­um in Bal­main, Cou­va as prime re­al es­tate ar­eas where the sta­dia ought to be used for mul­ti­ple pur­pos­es as op­posed to just sports alone.

"When you look at how sport is done through­out the world, every sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty around the world was not built for the sole pur­pose of sport alone, but with a vi­sion of it be­ing an in­come-gen­er­at­ing fa­cil­i­ty. It was built with the idea that it could be a source of rev­enue, and when you look at the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um, where it's lo­cat­ed and the amount of prime re­al es­tate it oc­cu­pies, we have to start look­ing at things that way."

"We can't look at our sit­u­a­tion where the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um is draw­ing down on the purse of the cen­tral gov­ern­ment. It has to be­come a sit­u­a­tion where it is gen­er­at­ing in­come, and not just the Hase­ly Craw­ford, but sev­er­al of the fa­cil­i­ties should be look­ing at this. If you look at Cou­va where you have a sport­ing hub with var­i­ous dis­ci­plines in tan­dem there, you're very close to the chil­dren's hos­pi­tal, so there is an av­enue for sports med­i­cine or sports sci­ence and tourism there as well, so that's the kind of di­rec­tion that you'll have to go," San­cho ex­plained.

In 2020, the T&T Foot­ball As­so­ci­a­tion (TTFA) signed a Mem­o­ran­dum of Un­der­stand­ing (MOU) for a mul­ti-bil­lion-dol­lar state-of-the-art foot­ball, com­mer­cial, res­i­den­tial and sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty with a UK Com­pa­ny to trans­form the Ari­ma Velo­drome and there­by the Ari­ma com­mu­ni­ty.

Then, TTFA gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ramesh Ramd­han la­belled the ini­tia­tive as one to erad­i­cate the fi­nan­cial woes of the foot­ball as­so­ci­a­tion. Ramd­han, a for­mer FI­FA World Cup ref­er­ee, ex­plained that the project, which was to be built on the up­per deck of the Ari­ma Velo­drome, would have pro­vid­ed com­mer­cial and res­i­den­tial spaces for sale to the open mar­ket.

San­cho said that while the ini­tia­tive is sim­i­lar, the ini­tia­tive is a crit­i­cal one.

"You can't just look at it as a sport­ing venue, you have to look at it as prime re­al es­tate, so whether or not you in­clude com­mer­cial space for busi­ness­es, whether it be food or en­ter­tain­ment, what­ev­er it may be, I think the Hase­ly Craw­ford Sta­di­um can play a piv­otal role in this.

"When you look at so many sta­di­ums around the world, they have some of the top restau­rants, and top su­per­mar­kets, all part and par­cel of the cam­pus of that sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty, and that's the kind of thing you would want for any sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty, that it is gen­er­at­ing that in­come 24/7.

"Sport is played on par­tic­u­lar days and at par­tic­u­lar times, but the venue op­er­ates 24/7, so you would have to put things in place to en­sure that it is gen­er­at­ing rev­enue in that ca­pac­i­ty. We have to move away from the norm."

San­cho, whose name shot to world fame when lanky Eng­lish strik­er Pe­ter Crouch climbed on­to his back and pulled his hair to get off a head­er be­tween the teams in a World Cup group match, told Guardian Me­dia Sports: "You want a venue that will en­tice Trin­bag­o­ni­ans and vis­i­tors alike, to want to come to the fa­cil­i­ty, even if there's no sport­ing event go­ing on there, and that's the kind of sce­nario that you would want there. You want to have a lot of foot traf­fic in and around the area, be­cause that is all part and par­cel of it be­com­ing an in­come-gen­er­at­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

"When you re­ly sole­ly on the core busi­ness which is a sport­ing ac­tiv­i­ty, then you're not ful­fill­ing that man­date of the space, be­cause, at the end of the day, you want to have a fa­cil­i­ty that isn't drain­ing the gov­ern­ment purse. In­stead, you want some­thing that could be self-suf­fi­cient, stand on its own and add to the GDP of the coun­try."