Lucrative sub-continent market on the radar as CSA plot T20GL lift off

A visit by a South African delegation to India this week signals a thawing of relations between Cricket South Africa (CSA) and the BCCI in the post-Haroon Lorgat era. The delegation, made up of Thabang Moroe (acting chief executive), Chris Nenzani (president) and Naasei Appiah (chief financial officer), discussed several matters in Mumbai, but none was more important than Indian players' possible participation in CSA's showpiece T20 Global League event scheduled for next year.

The model for the 2018 event is hamstrung by CSA currently only having one major market into which to realistically sell their broadcast rights - the sub-Saharan one, which is insignificant in world terms. This, in turn, impacts on tournament budgets, which affect the bottom line and the tournament's future.

Indian player participation in national T20 leagues is becoming an increasingly hot topic in world cricket and their potential availability for next year's event theoretically opens up the lucrative sub-continental market, estimated by some to be 700-million strong. The broadcast rights revenues generated by a sale into this market might turn out to be the tournament's commercial saviour.

Compare this to a sub-Saharan market of between 15-20-million and one sees the need for a diplomatically pragmatic trip to India in an attempt to carve out a small share of the world's most significant cricket market.

Crucial, too, in all of this, is the role played by the South African satellite broadcaster, SuperSport. Depending on one's bias, they were either commercially prudent or deliberately obstinate in their negotiations with Lorgat over the broadcast deal for what turned out to be this year's postponed 2017 event.

Whether they were game-breakers or not in the eventual postponement of this year's tournament would become irrelevant if Indian player participation in the 2018 tournament was confirmed.

Another consideration as CSA try to wrestle the tournament into some kind of workable shape is the vexed topic of black participation. Lorgat alienated a significant proportion of his board when announcing that normal transformation criteria would be suspended for the duration of the 2017 T20GL. Such a decision was not only strategically but commercially unwise, because a high-level of black participation might also push up local viewing numbers, thus strengthening the tournament's financial base.

As CSA wrestle with trying to find an ideal form for the T20GL, insiders have confirmed that an eight-team competition with a bloated schedule of 57 matches is probably not the way to go, particularly in the first few years. Even if the number of teams (and number of matches) it cut to, say, to six franchises, the likely budgets are astronomical in Rand terms, coming in at roughly R100-million per franchise and R1-billion for the tournament as a whole. This appears unfeasible if SuperSport are the only broadcast bidder.

Said one insider: "You have to secure income beforehand and cut your cloth accordingly. You've got many models, it all depends. It's possible that the tournament does come to pass next year but if that's with the eight-team model then it is going to be very difficult."

CSA's current struggle becomes even more interesting when one considers that in 2008 the respective boards of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa had preliminary discussions about starting what was tentatively called the 'Southern Premier League' (SPL). Such a T20 league was meant to mirror the Tri-Nations Rugby Championship and it was understood that the three boards would allow their players to participate in the IPL but only on condition that Indian players participated in the SPL in return.

Not only would the tournament have secured the participation of Indian players early in the T20 piece, it would also have had many other advantages, such as broadening viewership into multiple territories and the creation of a tournament which was effectively a mini-Champions League.

Early enthusiasm, however, petered out, with the Australians going on to pioneer the Big Bash, which is expected to start generating significant profit in the next few years. South African cricket, meanwhile, became mired in the Gerald Majola crisis and its long-term repercussions. The nearly three years the CSA took to address the issue of Majola awarding himself illegal bonuses post South Africa's hosting of the IPL in 2009 effectively plunged the organisation into paralysis from which they have only ever partially recovered. On one level, the T20GL is nothing other than an attempt to make up for lost commercial ground.

How this lost ground is recovered is a matter of hot debate behind CSA closed doors. Their current broadcast rights deal with SuperSport comes to an end in 2018 and there is discussion that they might yet link their T20 rights to their bilateral rights as they negotiate a new deal. On the other hand, their T20 rights might remain separate, as they currently are.

Whichever way they decide to go, an improved relationship with India will be a key element in their global strategic objectives.