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Pakistan Super League franchises make a big profit from the seventh season of PSL while most of the Bangladesh Premier League franchises suffer losses.
In a media release, Pakistan Cricket Board said that all the franchises of PSL made a huge fortune from the tournament that ran from January 27 to February 27.
“HBL PSL 7 profits jumped to 71 percent, the most in its history, with each franchise earning around PKR900million, again the most in HBL PSL’s history, and all before the first ball was even bowled,” said PCB President Ramiz Raja in a statement on Monday.
“For next year, we aspire to take this league to the homes of all franchises and broaden its fan-reach”, added the former cricketer.
PSL started its journey in 2015, three years after the inception of BPL in 2012.
BPL is yet to find the right balance and format but PSL despite the late start has become one of the most competitive franchise-based cricket tournaments and also financially successful.
This year, both the tournaments started and ended almost at the same timeframe. Therefore, a bunch of international cricketers preferred PSL over BPL, despite the entire tournament taking place in Pakistan which is considered unsafe by many.
BCB only entitled the franchisee ownership rights for one season in the last edition of BPL, the fee was Taka one Crore and for local players’ payment, the franchises had to deposit Taka four crore.
The prize money of the tournament was Taka one crore.
Comilla Victorians are Champions of the latest edition of BPL, chairperson of the franchise Nafisa Kamal told The Business Post that they could hardly meet the ends,
“No franchise can make profit from BPL so long there will not be any revenue-sharing model. We take money from our sponsors; we sell the jersey spots. We are lucky that we have few trusted sponsors who are generous, after getting the green signal from them we can chalk out a budget and plan which foreign players we can afford”, she said on Tuesday.
“There is no scope for profit-making in the existing format”, Nafisa added.
After hearing about the profits of PSL franchises, she became astonished and spoke “I heard it from you, I did not know about it. See PCB knows how much profit the franchises made, they have a good working relationship which we don’t have here. They never even wanted to know how we are running the team”, said Nafisa.
PSL sold the franchise rights of five teams for 10 years for $93 million, later they sold the sixth franchise for $6.35 million for seven years.
Nafisa believes that due to the short-term agreement and lower franchise fee, many rubbish companies make their way into BPL which turns the tournament into a mess,
“When we raise the issue of profit sharing, the board always replies with the cliché term that they are taking lower franchise fees. But for the low franchise fee, many substandard companies get involved in BPL as franchises that could not sustain. They come for one season and go out next season, there is no consistency”, told the Comilla Victorians chairperson.
She also said that if the board agrees to share the revenue from broadcast and ticketing, she is ready to pay the higher franchise fee,
“This year the board took Taka one crore as the franchise fee and taka four crores as the payments of local cricketers, total five crores. Previously it was like Eight crores. We paid that sum previously and willing to give again. If the franchise fee is higher, then reputed companies like Basundhara and Beximco will come as team owners”, Said Nafisa.
She also said that the franchise could hardly make any profit from the eighth edition of BPL where Comilla Victorians were the champions. Even they did not receive the full prize money,
“The announced prizemoney was one crore but we are getting around 50 lakhs because the local player’s payment is made through BCB, the remaining 50 lakhs will go there. The prize money is also very low”, Nafisa told The Business Post.
