The top­ic of “wast­ed time and en­er­gy” re­cent­ly popped up in my mind, specif­i­cal­ly re­gard­ing Trinidad and To­ba­go, rather than the Caribbean as a whole.

Why T&T? I was re­flect­ing while read­ing the Jan­u­ary/Feb­ru­ary edi­tion of Caribbean Beat mag­a­zine on a Caribbean Air­lines flight to Cu­ra­cao. A fea­ture on Jules So­bion, chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer (CEO) of Cae­sar’s Army, held my at­ten­tion. The head­line, “Mil­lion Dol­lar Mas,” de­tailed how So­bion views in­no­va­tion not as mere spec­ta­cle, but as strat­e­gy. Over two decades, he has built one of the Caribbean’s most recog­nis­able event brands by merg­ing cre­ativ­i­ty with dis­ci­plined busi­ness plan­ning, shap­ing a busi­ness mod­el de­signed for growth.

So­bion, an avid sports en­thu­si­ast dur­ing his teenage years, fre­quent­ed the Har­vard Club bas­ket­ball courts.

​I write this week’s col­umn from a ho­tel room at the Cu­ra­cao Mar­riott, where I am at­tend­ing a Caribbean Na­tion­al Olympic Com­mit­tees (CANOC) ex­ec­u­tive com­mit­tee re­treat. Cu­ra­cao is set to host this year’s CANOC Gen­er­al As­sem­bly in Oc­to­ber.

​You may well ask: “Where are you go­ing with this pre­am­ble? What is the con­nec­tion to the feel­ing of wast­ed time and en­er­gy?”

​It has to do with Sport Busi­ness TT. In March 2016, the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee (TTOC) host­ed its first Sports Busi­ness Con­fer­ence. Ti­tled “Trinidad and To­ba­go Sport: Ris­ing to the Chal­lenge,” the event aimed to ad­dress eco­nom­ic growth and di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion. It was at­tend­ed by key de­ci­sion mak­ers in the sport, fi­nance, me­dia and tech­nol­o­gy sec­tors, while sev­er­al gov­ern­ment lead­ers and in­vestors were al­so present.

One of the main out­comes of the con­fer­ence was that ur­gent ac­tion was re­quired to turn T&T in­to a des­ti­na­tion for sports events, in­clud­ing re­gion­al and con­ti­nen­tal sin­gle-sport cham­pi­onships. The TTOC agreed to cre­ate a think tank to de­vel­op a strat­e­gy tak­ing in­to ac­count ar­eas such as fi­nance, in­vest­ment, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, event plan­ning and mar­ket­ing to cre­ate a busi­ness plan for the sports in­dus­try. The ob­jec­tive is to cre­ate a prof­itable T&T Sports Busi­ness Sec­tor by 2030.

At the third such con­fer­ence in March 2018, the feed­back from sev­er­al speak­ers who par­tic­i­pat­ed on the four pan­els was that if T&T is to grow a sus­tain­able and suc­cess­ful sports in­dus­try, then ath­letes and sports ad­min­is­tra­tors must be­gin think­ing about the val­ue of their brand and how that trans­lates in­to a busi­ness prod­uct.

The pan­els cov­ered top­ics such as:

• Cre­at­ing an en­tre­pre­neur­ial eco-sys­tem in T&T: Look­ing for mar­ket gaps; iden­ti­fy­ing and analysing do­mes­tic and in­ter­na­tion­al op­por­tu­ni­ties.

• The po­lit­i­cal and le­gal en­vi­ron­ment that fos­ters en­tre­pre­neurs and en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

• How do po­ten­tial lenders and in­vestors eval­u­ate the busi­ness plan: fund­ing and in­vest­ing in en­tre­pre­neur­ship.

• Cre­at­ing hu­man con­nec­tions that build brands and dri­ve growth.

Sev­er­al speak­ers stressed the im­por­tance of ath­letes pur­su­ing their pas­sion and stay­ing fo­cused on build­ing their brand so they could be as­sured of a ca­reer even af­ter they stopped play­ing sports.

The 2018 en­tre­pre­neurs’ pan­el in­clud­ed So­bion.

So, what hap­pened to the Sport Busi­ness TT con­fer­ence and its 2030 vi­sion for sport en­tre­pre­neur­ship and a bil­lion-dol­lar T&T sport in­dus­try sec­tor? What hap­pened to the ideas and sug­ges­tions shared by So­bion and many oth­er busi­ness, fi­nance and le­gal ex­perts?

Gath­er­ing dust some­where, the vi­sion evap­o­rat­ed?

I re­peat, ten years lat­er, a state­ment from the 2016 Sport Busi­ness TT com­mu­niqué: “If Brand T&T is to be­come a world class glob­al sport brand, the chal­lenge is to move from talk to ac­tion and to do so not some­day but now.”