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Friday, July 18, 2025

Lewis: Sport in­dus­try not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly in T&T

T&T missing out on billions in sport

by

2688 days ago
20180309
President of the TTOC Brian Lewis

President of the TTOC Brian Lewis

Bri­an Lewis, pres­i­dent of the T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee be­lieves the coun­try is not cash­ing in on a sub­stan­tial among of mon­ey avail­able to it in the sports in­dus­try.

His com­ment came in his ad­dress at the 3rd An­nu­al T&TOC Sport In­dus­try T&T Con­fer­ence held at the Hy­att Re­gency Ho­tel on Wright­son Road, Port-of-Spain. The event fo­cused on four key top­ics in­clud­ing- ‘Cre­at­ing an En­tre­pre­neur­ial Eco-Sys­tem in T&T, the po­lit­i­cal and Le­gal en­vi­ron­ment that fos­ters en­tre­pre­neur­ship, how do po­ten­tial lenders and in­vestors eval­u­ate the busi­ness plan, and cre­at­ing hu­man con­nec­tions that build brands and dri­ve growth.

A wide cross sec­tion of ex­perts and en­tre­pre­neurs in busi­ness, fi­nance, sport, law, me­dia and en­ter­tain­ment par­tic­i­pat­ed in the dis­cus­sions.

Lewis, who has been cham­pi­oning the cause for Na­tion­al Gov­ern­ing Bod­ies (NG­Bs) to be more cre­ative in the midst of the cur­rent eco­nom­ic sit­u­a­tion said, "It’s time for en­tre­pre­neur­ship in sport to be­come a se­ri­ous part of the pol­i­cy dis­course." He al­so ques­tioned why T&T had failed to lever­age the po­ten­tial op­por­tu­ni­ties cre­at­ed by the out­stand­ing achieve­ments of ath­letes and teams on the glob­al stage.

“Why are we con­tin­u­ing to leave bil­lions of dol­lars on the ta­ble? Un­like oth­er coun­tries that seek to di­ver­si­fy their econ­o­my, why is sport as an in­dus­try not tak­en se­ri­ous­ly here in the twin-is­land re­pub­lic? As we talk about net for­eign ex­change, as we talk about em­ploy­ment gen­er­a­tion, why are we not em­brac­ing the op­por­tu­ni­ty?”

The &TT Olympic boss said the dif­fi­cult eco­nom­ic times could be­come the cat­a­lyst for the de­vel­op­ment of lo­cal en­tre­pre­neur­ship in sport as the days of ‘beg­ging for hand­outs’ are over.

“We need to move sport, and the dis­cus­sion sur­round­ing sport in T&T from the ba­by bird ap­proach where we sit in the nests with our mouths open, wait­ing for mom­ma bird to drop food. We must em­brace the re­al­i­ty of the con­cept and have the con­fi­dence to be apex preda­tors.”

Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try Paula Gopee-Scoon said out­side of the so­cial and health spheres, there are en­tre­pre­neur­ial op­por­tu­ni­ties to be ex­ploit­ed in the very wide sport­ing are­na.

"Glob­al­ly, the sport in­dus­try is a mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar busi­ness, and coun­tries world­wide are seek­ing to cap­i­tal­ize on this pow­er­ful tool for eco­nom­ic pros­per­i­ty and wealth cre­ation. Ac­cord­ing to the 2017 Price Wa­ter­house Coop­ers (PWC) Sports Re­port, the val­ue of the sport in­dus­try in North Amer­i­ca alone is worth ap­prox­i­mate­ly USD $69.3 bil­lion and is pro­ject­ed to es­ca­late to an es­ti­mat­ed USD $78.5 bil­lion by 2021. Some of the more lu­cra­tive ar­eas in sport to­day in­clude Spon­sor­ship (USD $17.6 bil­lion), Mer­chan­dis­ing (USD $14.4 bil­lion), Tick­et Sales (USD $19.6 bil­lion) and Me­dia and Broad­cast­ing Rights (USD $19.1 bil­lion)," Gopee Scoon ex­plained.

She added "Sport there­fore, has a key role to play in the di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my. The mar­ket­place has changed and per­haps our minds should ex­tend be­yond tra­di­tion­al sec­tors such as oil and gas to sport and, in par­tic­u­lar, the busi­ness of sport, as an in­dus­try which of­fers a myr­i­ad of en­tre­pre­neur­ial pos­si­bil­i­ties."


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