One man’s obsession with turning cricket into a multibillon-dollar sport has dominated the sporting headlines this year and whipped up a good deal of controversy.
American billionaire Sir Allen Stanford believes Twenty20 cricket can overtake football as the biggest game in world sport, angering many traditionalists who feel the money being thrown into Twenty20 cricket will destroy the older form of the game, played over five days.
In June 2008 Stamford and the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) signed a deal for five Twenty20 internationals between England and the Stanford Superstars in the Caribbean with $20m to be awarded to the wining team for each match. The whole package is worth $100m. It was the largest amount of cash offered to a team for a single tournament.
In addition, to the winner-takes-all matches, the deal includes an annual Twenty20 quadrangular involving England (as hosts), West Indies and two guest teams with a prize of US$9.5m.
“It is one night, winner-takes-all $20m,” said Sir Allen before the match was played. “Twenty20 is what’s going to grab the TV revenue and it’s the future of sport, make no mistake about that. This [series] will expose the sport to a whole different market that has never seen cricket, nor would they be interested to see the game via a Test-match series.”
England were duly thrashed by the Stanford Superstars in Antigua at the start of November by ten wickets, with each England player missing out on the $1m prize money.
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