Cricket Rights - A letter to the Editor by Abbas Zaidi

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Event:

England in Pakistan 2005/06

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DateLine: 1st November 2005

 

Letter to the Editor - (Published in DAWN, November 1, 2005

 

This refers to the item featured prominently in your sport pages (Oct 23) quoting Cdr (retd) Gilani’s criticism of the PCB’s recent marketing of various rights. His outburst seems motivated by the fact that the PCB did not freeze the bidding process in order to accommodate his employer TWI’s request for "a few days’ extension" in the opening of bids for the bundled rights on Oct 5.

 

He presumes that our other bidders would have been happy to twiddle their thumbs while TWI prepared to submit a bid, or for that matter chose eventually not to do so.

 

The request, ironically, was made even though Cdr (retd) Gilani is quoted to have said that the transparent process adopted by PCB did not provide a "level playing-field and did not justify the time and effort needed" for submitting a bid.

 

The type of two-round bidding process that he complains about is often used in our country by the privatization commission, and in the case of impugned In-stadia advertising rights for the 2005 tour of the England team it actually yielded 61 percent additional revenues to the PCB – this being the differential between the highest bids in the first and second rounds. Moreover, every bidder was aware of the two-tier bidding process and submitted their bids in acceptance of the ground rules.

 

I will crave your indulgence to make only one other point: In comparing the revenue stream being derived from the coming England tour with the results achieved from the 2004 tour of the Indian team, which came after a hiatus of over 14 years, Cdr (retd) Gilani displays a sad departure from objectivity.

 

Surely it would have been more appropriate to offer a comparison with a tour by any other visiting team – but perhaps it would not have served to admit the truth that the revenues generated by the coming England tour far exceed the amounts earned from any other tour, barring the unique 2004 visit by India.

 

Abbas Zaid
Director Board Operations
Pakistan Cricket Board

(Article: Copyright © 2005 Pakistan Cricket Board)