Editorial | Dave Cameron has a point

It is not often that this newspaper is in agreement with Dave Cameron, the former president of Cricket West Indies (CWI).

However, The Gleaner is sympathetic to Mr Cameron’s call for an overhaul of the International Cricket Council’s (ICC) revenue-sharing formula and his implication that the West Indies, and by inference other poor cricketing nations, should, if necessary, boycott competitions with the so-called “Big Three” (India, Australia and England) if they resist reform.

Mr Cameron, though, would burnish his credibility on the matter by first doing a mea culpa, acknowledging his role in facilitating cricket’s unfair financial architecture when he caved to the Big Three’s Indian-led power grab, on the expectation that the falling crumbs would be sufficient to fill CWI’s coffers.

By going along with their coup, he expected that CWI’s financial flows from the ICC would rise “by 100 per cent” over the eight-year funding cycle. That didn’t materialise.

Mr Cameron’s intervention into the debate about CWI’s financial crisis, and how it gets out of it, followed the board’s recent announcement of suspensions and cuts to regional cricket competitions. Additionally, the players it has under contract for international matches and domestic franchises will receive pay cuts of up to 25 per cent. Cricket West Indies has also said that it is receiving a US$12.8 million loan from the ICC, cricket’s global governing body.

INSOLVENCY CRISIS

The immediate trigger of CWI’s action is the insolvency crisis that confronts it after a reversal from a US$22.6-million surplus in 2023/24 to a US$28.5- million loss for the financial year that ended in September 2025. The difference was that in the 2023/24 financial year the West Indies co-hosted the T20 World Cup, from which its share of profit distribution, media rights and ticket sales from the ICC was US$80.27 million. In 2024/25, these line items generated US$32.1 million, a decline of US$48.2 million or 60 per cent.

This is compounded by the cyclical nature of CWI’s financial flows and the formula used by the ICC to distribute profit.

Up to 2014, the ICC’s full members, including CWI, shared equally in the 75 per cent to 80 per cent of the profits generated internationally. However, host countries kept all the profits generated from bilateral tours, after paying and meeting the domestic expenses of touring teams. This was not always favourable for teams with small domestic markets.

In 2014, the asymmetry in cricket’s financing was further skewed. While the-host-takes-all arrangement remained largely in place, the ICC introduced a weighted-average scheme for its profit share that depended significantly on the size of a country’s market and its generation of profits. Under that system, India was guaranteed an estimated 22.8 per cent of the ICC’s distribution, England 6.9 per cent and Australia 5.2 per cent. The West Indies’ share of the pot was projected to hover at about three per cent.

“After extensive discussions and careful consideration, the West Indies Cricket Board joined with all other full members of the ICC in providing support for key principles,” Dave Cameron said at the time. Mr Cameron’s view, apparently, despite the backlash, was that it would be counterproductive to take on India.

ADJUSTMENTS

But by 2017, it was clear that the system was not working in favour of countries with smaller markets, leading to adjustments under the ICC’s reformist chairman, Shashank Manohar. With this reset, India’s take of the ICC’s payout was adjusted downward to 15 per cent. The West Indies’ share was expected to hover at just under five per cent.

However, with Mr Manohar’s departure, India’s cricket board reasserted itself at the ICC. Under the 2023-2027 funding scheme, its take of the ICC’s payouts spiralled upwards to 38.5 per cent, while the West Indies’ portion is down to an estimated 4.58 per cent. However, exponential growth in the ICC’s income meant the distribution was from a larger pot.

That, however, lessened the West Indies’ fundamental problem, whose solution Mr Cameron apparently feels rests with the change in the ICC’s compensation and the profit-sharing regime for tours. He, however, conceded to a “massive error” by CWI, when he was a member of the board and a president, in distributing profits to shareholder territories when it hosted the Cricket World Cup in 2007 and later won the T20 tournament. Those profits, he said, should have been invested.

With respect to the West Indies’ current tour of India for a One-Day International and T20 series, Mr Cameron said that India will earn huge profits while CWI receives little in return.

“It just doesn’t make sense ... You can’t run a business where no matter whether you are the best team in the world you can’t improve your revenues,” he said. “That’s not a business, the model has to change.”

We agree! CWI’s moves to open new markets in the Americas are sensible. But even if successful, that won’t be an effective solution if it merely replicates the existing arrangements. The Big Three have to be challenged.

As Dave Cameron put it: “We need to be more forceful about it, and if it means withdrawing from the cricket – I would be as dramatic as that, as to say, ‘Well India, play yourself if you’re not willing to share the resources with us’ ... That would get everybody understanding how serious the situation is.”