Champions League T20: A flawed idea from the start

The franchise-based Twenty20 model came into existence soon after India, who had played only one T20 international prior to the ICC World T20 in 2007, went on to win the inaugural Cup.

As India celebrated its heroes, some saw an opportunity to create a sporting spectacle out of the shortest format of the game. Essel group along with former cricketers such as Kapil Dev and Dean Jones were the first to turn the idea to reality as they formed the Indian Cricket League.

However, the BCCI did not get along with the idea, and with the ICC on board, players who were a part of ICL were banned from international cricket.

The BCCI then formed a T20 league of its own, and with the amount of money involved and the coming together of Bollywood and cricket meant that the IPL was an instant hit. The success of the IPL meant that similar leagues in the other parts of the cricketing world quickly came into existence.

This prompted the BCCI to come up with the idea of Champions League T20 and with others, primarily Cricket Australia and Cricket South Africa, getting on board, the idea turned into reality. The concept looked to be spectacular on paper as it provided a common platform for the best T20 teams around the world to battle it out to become the ultimate T20 champion.

However, what transpired in the next six years was not quite according to the plan that cricket’s big wigs had set out for.

What went wrong?
The tournament was roughly based on similar lines as the UEFA Champions League, where the best football clubs from around the world battle it out for the ultimate prize but cricket is not football and the club format was still finding its feet in the cricketing world.

Without any doubt, the IPL was a spectacular success but was the crowd around the world ready to accept players whom they have never seen or possibly never heard off?

So what were the problems?
1. India-centric format
The tournament was far too India-centric. A lot of factors made it more and more clear that the CL T20 was the BCCI’s brainchild and it was primarily meant to cater to Indian audiences. After the success of the IPL, the BCCI probably thought that they could sell any type of cricket to the Indian public.

However, even the Indian audiences were not yet ready to see say, Otagao Volts versus Trinidad battle it out in Chepauk. A direct entry of four IPL teams in the main draw of the tournament meant that there were only eight teams from the other six nations and out of those eight teams, Australia and South Africa accounted for two each. In the end the fans voted with their feet and while games featuring Indian teams typically sold out, games without IPL teams were usually played in front of empty grandstands.

2. No real team identity
Most of the teams who came to participate in the championship failed to establish any real connection with the mostly Indian audiences. As players were required to represent their IPL franchise over their domestic team there were fewer marquee players in the other nation’s line up with whom the crowd could associate with. Those that did play for their domestic sides were just not of the same quality that IPL teams had in them.

3. Market uncertainty
Four of the five editions of the tournament saw a different title sponsor. BCCI roped in Airtel as the title sponsor, with a five-year deal but the telecom giant chose to go after only a couple of years.

Airtel was replaced by Nokia which reportedly had signed a three-year deal but left after only one edition. The next couple of years saw Karbonn Mobiles and Oppo Mobiles as the title sponsor of the tournament.

The continuous change of the title sponsor meant that the product did not have the benefits that companies were looking for to align themselves with it. A study reported that the first edition of the tournament saw ratings about a quarter of that of the IPL.

The television rights were brought by Star India for a whopping $US975 million for a 10-year deal which meant that each year it had to make roughly 90 million dollars to break even. However, in the first few editions of the tournament it managed to garner only 40-45 million dollars, which meant huge losses for the company.

The tournament had some other flaws as well, the tournament as a whole was not marketed to the level at which tournament of such stature should be. Star, which comes out with unique advertisement campaign for every tournament that it broadcasts, did not come up with any such strategy for the Champions League.

For a tournament such as this to become success of sorts it becomes imperative that all the cricket boards backed by the ICC develop an alternative structure of the tournament that focusses on developing a fan-base for the domestic franchises so that people can associate with their teams.

The solutions
Plan A: A tournament such as the IPL, which is eight weeks long can be divided into two halves and depending upon the cricketing season of other nations, domestic champions from them can travel to India and compete with India’s champions as a build up to the IPL and at the same time playing out the league games for the Champions League. In this plan the Champions League is split into two halves, the first half running in parallel with the IPL and the other half running during India’s offseason.

For example: IPL usually kicks off in April’s first week, and does not clash with Australia, New Zealand and South Africa’s cricketing season. Therefore, champions from these nations can come over to India and play their away games. Similarly, Indian teams can also travel abroad in their off-season to play away games.

However, a format such as this requires careful modelling of ICC’s Future Tour’s Program so as to accommodate these games.

Plan B: Say for example, India is touring Australia for a Test series followed by a T20 and ODI series then domestic champions from India can also travel to Australia before the start of T20 series to play their away games against Australia’s champions and vice-versa when Australia tours India.

A year-long schedule can be framed out and a point system can be maintained to draw out the finalists who will battle for the coveted championship.

Plans such as these, are easy to draw out on paper but difficult to execute, given the fact that the franchise culture is difficult to accommodate in the international calendar as international matches are the ultimate when it comes to cricket.

Therefore, as pointed out earlier the role of different cricket boards becomes critical for the success of such tournaments and hopefully if the tournament is revived in the future, the strategy around it would be well thought out.