Enshrining the might of the BCCI: Inside the TV deals that made cricket richer and less equal than ever before

Ehsan Mani is nobody’s idea of an insurrectionist. A chartered accountant who has sat on the boards of banks, he would become head of finance – and later president – of the ICC, and now lives a brisk ten-minute walk from Lord’s. Yet, with Jagmohan Dalmiya, then president of the ICC, he engineered the deal in 2000 that overturned cricket’s power structure. It would lead, in August 2022, to a bounty the like of which the ICC had never seen.

The rights to broadcast their events between 2024 and 2027 in India alone were sold to Disney Star for around $3.1bn, dwarfing the previous deal, which ended with the 2023 World Cup and was worth $1.9bn – over eight years. That deal was worldwide, and sold to one broadcaster. This time, the ICC went territory by territory – 11 in all – and by 2027 should earn a global figure close to $3.5bn.

This was great news for cricket boards, who stood to earn more than ever from the ICC. One, however, would earn far more: the BCCI, already the world’s wealthiest, would make $231m per year, more than the combined grants to the next seven. The lopsided share was the result of the BCCI’s long-standing argument that anywhere between 70 per cent and 80 per cent of global cricket revenue comes from India, and should be reflected in what the ICC pay them. Cricket is richer than ever, and yet more inequitable. This is not what Mani and Dalmiya intended when they brokered the ICC’s first rights deal 25 years ago. In those days, the ICC had modest office space in the Lord’s clock tower, and scant staffing. If boards wanted to get in touch, they had to book a call or send a telex. Most also had representatives based in London, including Mani for Pakistan. There was one exception. “India came themselves,” he says. “Mr Dalmiya wouldn’t let anyone else do it.”

The ICC made no money, subsisting off membership fees and payouts from World Cups, such as when Mani and Dalmiya – then heads of the Pakistan and Indian boards – sold commercial rights for the 1996 tournament, staged in South Asia, for $20m; it made $50m in profit for the hosts, who kept the money but paid participation fees to the rest. In this instance, they also briefly funded the ICC’s running costs: “£100,000 a year was petty cash,” says Mani. That World Cup, and the 1998 ICC Knockout Trophy in Bangladesh, opened cricket’s eyes to its financial clout. When, in 1999, the ECB made only a similar profit from their World Cup, Mani was surprised: “I was quite shocked and disappointed that England didn’t end up making more than we did. Bigger economy, bigger market and yet… It was strange.”

Dalmiya soon ascended to the ICC presidency, which prompted Mani – by now head of their finance and commercial affairs committee – to become proactive. Campbell Jamieson, an Australian cricket executive, worked with him. Mani sought out major broadcasters, and asked them what the game was doing wrong. Their message was clear: ceding all commercial rights to tournament hosts, and selling one-off events, was amateurish. Industry experts told Mani that, if two World Cups were bundled up with a couple more tournaments over an eight-year period, the ICC could raise close to $300m. So he packaged up the 2003 and 2007 World Cups with three Champions Trophies – and alerted the market.

The response was beyond their wildest expectations. India’s Zee network offered $600m, and Global Cricket Corporation – a joint venture between World Sports Group and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp – $550m. (Had they gone event by event, the ICC would have made only $350m.) They chose GCC, who offered security of payment and, in June 2000, the deal was formalised, upending the equation between members and the ICC.

“We were trying to raise more money for cricket,” says Jamieson, who stayed at the ICC for 25 years and now consults for cricket boards. “They thought it was fantastic, because there was this additional money coming to them. When I started, members used to pay the ICC to keep it afloat. A few years later, they were receiving around $5m a year from the ICC. It substantially changed their position.”

With New Zealand’s Sir John Anderson, Mani drew up a plan to distribute the cash. Six per cent of gross revenues was set aside for the game’s global development. Of the rest, 75 per cent would go to Full Members, and 25 per cent to Associates. It went without saying that each Full Member would receive an equal share.

Back then, England and Australia were financially robust, an ICC handout no more than a useful bonus. For most others, though, the new revenue stream wrought profound change. Until then, they had relied on a combination of meagre broadcast money for bilateral cricket, plus sponsorship and gate receipts. Now, for the likes of New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and West Indies, there was a fixed source of substantial income that would allow long-term planning. New Zealand worked out a four-year financial cycle; Pakistan built an Academy and several smaller grounds.

Even for the BCCI, whose annual revenues were hovering around $20m, this wasn’t small change. They were locked into a grossly undervalued deal with state broadcaster Doordarshan, worth $58m for five years. When that ended, in 2004, they were embroiled in a rights dispute with Zee and ESPN Star Sports that prevented them from maximising their value.

Above all, cricket expanded, at least by the superficial metric of ICC membership. A push for growth by their development committee, led by Ali Bacher, in the late 1990s coincided with the new windfall. By 1998, the ICC had, over nearly 90 years, admitted only 36 Associate and Affiliate Members; a decade later, they had more than 90. In 2004, they introduced the (now defunct) first-class Intercontinental Cup, conceived – in what now seems a utopian dream – as a pathway to full membership.

Internally, the ICC evolved in neat parallel. When Malcolm Speed was appointed chief executive in 2001, he was told by Malcolm Gray, then president, that the immediate challenge was “to grow it from its current inadequate state to an influential, respected and powerful governing body”. In 2001, there were 16 staff. By 2010, after relocating to Dubai, they had around 130. New departments sprang up: development, commercial, broadcast, anti-doping; the anti-corruption unit, established in 2000, grew; umpires came under ICC control. In 2001, members’ subscription fees had totalled around $300,000. By the end of the decade, it was $22m. There was nearly $20m in reserve. But just as the Global Cricket Corporation deal was coming to an end with the 2007 World Cup, three moments triggered the undercurrents that set the course for the next decades.

The first was when the BCCI signed a broadcast deal with Nimbus in 2006, a momentous $612m for four years. Less than two years later, led by Lalit Modi, they signed a decade-long broadcast deal for their newest product, the IPL, for just over $1bn. “I don’t think we previously got a fair value for our home internationals,” says Ratnakar Shetty, their first high-level paid professional, appointed chief administrative officer in 2006, and affectionately known as “Prof” (he had taught chemistry). “That Nimbus deal was the first time we saw a huge income from media rights. And the IPL deal took it even further.”

A few months after the Indians signed with Nimbus came the second moment: the ICC locked in a rights deal, with ESPN Star Sports. As ICC officials are keen to point out, this – and not the IPL – was cricket’s first billion-dollar deal. More events were bundled together, including two T20 World Cups, which meant an ICC event every year until 2015, and an extra $400m over the cycle. They didn’t take control over TV production of their events but, through Aarti Dabas – their first head of broadcast rights – they had greater input into how it looked.

A week before the IPL deal in January 2008 came the third moment, confirmation of the BCCI’s new strongman status: Monkeygate. When Harbhajan Singh was accused of a racist slur by Andrew Symonds during the Sydney Test, India threatened to pull out of the tour if Harbhajan was suspended. Worried by the financial implications, Cricket Australia sidestepped the ICC, and hashed out an unsatisfactory compromise, with no mention of racism. The ICC punished Harbhajan, but did not suspend him. CA, who ran the world’s best team, were now scrambling to appease the BCCI. The Australians’ response formed the template that would shape cricket.

One way to understand this period is through the sibling-like rivalry between the ICC and India, a complex legacy bequeathed by Dalmiya, who had a foot in both camps and, on returning to the BCCI, started to chip away at his old employers. Dalmiya was gone by 2006, but Modi was now carrying India’s flame, and was more voluble in articulating discontent with the ICC, and Indian ambition at their expense. They threatened not to sign the membership participants’ agreement (covering teams’ terms and conditions at global events), claiming it infringed their players’ rights, while Modi taunted the ICC for not maximising their first rights deal. It’s surprising India didn’t object to the equality of the revenue distribution. Perhaps it was because, by then, ICC income was a drop in their ocean. “I don’t think it was even discussed,” says Shetty. “The focus was on increasing our domestic rights values.”

Meanwhile, the ICC were feeling the pressure of a billion-dollar deal underwritten by an Indian broadcaster. Dabas remembers ESPN Star Sports officials fretting as rain washed out India’s opening game at the 2007 T20 World Cup, the new cycle’s first tournament. India were without some big names, and were sceptical about the format. Their early exit at the recent 50-over World Cup in the Caribbean had spooked the industry. A repeat would be a catastrophe.

Even though they ended up winning the competition, a propelling force for the T20 format, those anxieties foreshadowed years of tussle and negotiation between the broadcaster and the ICC. The battle for Indian viewership started weighing down these conversations (despite Mani’s protestations that eyeballs were for cricket, not just India). How many India games can we guarantee? Can we schedule them at better times? Can India and Pakistan be in the same group? Can we televise their warm-ups? It became the ICC’s job to strike a balance between a broadcaster with both eyes on the Indian market, and their own attempts to grow the sport. As one official described it, nobody won: “You try and make sure it’s not a total disaster.” The real exertions were still to come.

Among the era’s numbers, the one that permeated the discourse was a percentage: 75. Namely, that three-quarters of all cricket’s money was Indian. The figure could go as high as 80, or as low as 60, though 75 was most commonly cited. Above all, its importance lay in what it signified: BCCI muscle.

The provenance of this percentage remains elusive. But as it became ubiquitous, it acquired authority and versatility, as easily applied to the proportion of viewers from India as to the proportion of Indian sponsors; to the contribution to the TV rights of a country hosting India; or to the percentage of the ICC’s revenues that emanate from the Indian economy. The BCCI flaunted it, and used it as an implicit threat: if we don’t get our way, we will walk, and so will the percentage. They never did, but the message was clear, not least to England and Australia.

And so, by 2013, as work began on the third rights deal, the moment was ripe. The IPL, despite scandals, was a cash cow; India’s home broadcast deals were running out of zeroes to affix. And, according to Shetty, the ICC’s tender documents referred to a 70 per cent value provided by the Indian market. The BCCI seized on this, even though ICC officials involved at the time claim the reference didn’t exist. But with the rights expected to fetch their biggest value yet, India wanted adequate recompense. Or else.

A working group was formed, led by the BCCI head N Srinivasan, with the ECB’s Giles Clarke, CA’s Wally Edwards, Jamieson (now the ICC’s general manager of commerce), Dean Kino (a former CA legal head) and Sundar Raman, then among the most influential men in cricket – even though his official brief was limited to the IPL. He was a disruptor at heart, with strident views on the inefficiencies and antiquated ways of international cricket. More money wasn’t the only item on the BCCI’s agenda: the ICC had to be put back in their place – as a members’ club, not a governing body. The working group saw them as a flabby, quasi-state institution lacking direction, and tasked Raman and Kino to make them leaner.

“There were disparities in the ICC’s commercial-rights delivery, and questions around event costs,” says Raman. “I was running the IPL and knew exactly what it cost – whether a hotel room, or transport, or a flight. Suddenly you see all these [ICC events] and you realise this is a whole load of lard here. And then Giles, Mr Srinivasan, Wally Edwards realised, you guys are running a great show in the IPL. We need to take best practices from there, and do right by the members’ money here.”

Raman and Srinivasan were scathing about the money – BCCI money, in their eyes – that was being spent by the ICC on development, but also on the details, such as the flights staff were taking. They complained about event costs they thought bore little accountability, and commercial deals they regarded as primitive. There was also a strain of payback directed at the ECB and CA: you ruled, now it’s our time; you have non-negotiable home seasons, why can’t we?

Then there was the money, as Edwards explained in an interview: “My incentives were more cricket-based. India was more money-based.” Ultimately, the role of Edwards and others was to convince the BCCI not to walk away, and to restrain them where they could. One described working with Raman: “We’d come up with something that was compromised – 95 per cent compromised on my side, and 5 per cent on his – and we would work through it.”

In January 2014, the working group’s conclusions were presented, concentrating control and money in the Big Three: India, England and Australia. Governance structures and revenue distribution were radically overhauled. An equal grant would, as before, be paid to Full Members. But on top was a contribution grant, a percentage calculated from a set of metrics graded individually for each member. The metrics included revenue indirectly contributed to the ICC, on-field performance, domestic development and historic membership.

The greatest weighting was for the first – bad news for the Associates. In this model, over an eight-year deal worth $2.5bn, the BCCI would make $571m, the ECB $173m and CA $131m. The other Full Members would receive between $95m and $65m. There was no detail on the calculations. Did the working group, as one of them said, work backwards from an amount India wanted, and conjure up the metrics post hoc? Or was the formula, as another insisted, simply smoothed and reassessed until India were happy? Edwards admitted it was all a bit complicated, and done on the run.

This should have been the moment, as Gideon Haigh wrote in 2015, for a serious conversation about what that percentage actually meant. Did 75 per cent of cricket revenue from India automatically entitle the BCCI to it? (Mani argues it doesn’t: “What does it have to do with them? The ICC has a duty of care to all members.”) Did India deserve the most money only because it has a massive economy? What if India didn’t have anyone to play against: what would their value be then? Was the money coming from the Indian market, or was it because of the Indian market, which puts a subtly different slant on claiming ownership? And what about the BCCI’s own arguments in the 2004 TV-rights court case with Zee and ESPN Star Sports, where their counsel claimed they were autonomous, that the team they selected represented the BCCI, not India? If that were so, why should the BCCI benefit from Indian fans? Faced with a similar dilemma, the International Olympic Committee had for years paid a larger share to their biggest member, the USA, because that was also their largest commercial market. In 2012, they reduced the Americans’ share, recognising that the Olympic movement was only as strong as its weakest link.

In October 2014, with Srinivasan as chair, the ICC sold their broadcast rights to Star Sports for $1.9bn. With commercial rights, the value would eventually hit $2.5bn. But the contribution-grant model was never triggered, because a year later Srinivasan was turfed out. His replacement, Shashank Manohar, was a blip in the line of progressively bullish BCCI heads, and staunchly opposed the Big Three’s vision.

In February 2017, he pushed through a new revenue-distribution model: contribution grants were dropped, and lump-sum payments replaced percentages – proof, perhaps, that talk of a meritocratic system underpinned by formulas had always been hokum. But, even here, inequality was baked in. Initially, the BCCI would receive $293m across eight years, the ECB $143m, and the other Full Members (bar Zimbabwe) $132m. The BCCI objected, wanting their original share – $571m. They negotiated with Manohar, and agreed to meet somewhere in the middle: $405m, nearly three times as much as the next board.

The ICC’s logic in going territory by territory for the current deal was commercially sound. But they have also formalised a value percentage to the Indian market, and 75 per cent turns out to be an underestimate: $3.1bn out of global expected earnings of around $3.5bn equates to 89 per cent. As it happens, a component weighting of 85.3 per cent is given to the BCCI’s contribution to the ICC’s commercial revenues.

Contribution? Weighting? This sounds a little like… the Big Three model. Three other components – history, performance, membership – all ascribed without any evidence of formulas or calculations, all the the work of a finances committee headed by a BCCI bigwig, Jay Shah. The only difference is that even Srinivasan took allies along: now it’s the Big One. When discussions about revamping the financial model began in 2013, India was the elephant in the room. Now it seems cricket is a room inside the elephant.

Because they are getting more money than ever, members are not complaining. The reliance on ICC money has only deepened: even before the new model, it contributed 30–45 per cent of the revenues of the boards of South Africa, West Indies, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and Pakistan. The bounty may not last. The merger of the giants Disney Star and Viacom18 (who own the IPL rights) means Indian cricket broadcasting may become a buyer’s market. Uday Shankar, the joint venture’s vice-chair, has publicly spoken of a future stabilisation of rights values and, more pointedly, of not suffering from “FOMO” if they don’t bid for the next set of ICC rights.

Even so, enshrining the might of the BCCI is furthest from what Mani had in mind when he began the process. “I would never have let it happen,” he says. “Neither would Dalmiya.”

Osman Samiuddin is senior editor at ESPNcricinfo, and the author of The Unquiet Ones: A History of Pakistan Cricket.

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