Organisers to weigh up Singapore bid for finals

BRIDGETOWN, Barbados (CMC) – Singapore has emerged as an option to host this year’s Caribbean Premier League finals if no viable alternatives are forthcoming from the region, organisers have revealed.
To date, the finals of the Twenty20 tournament have never been staged outside of the Caribbean but CPL chief executive officer, Damien O’Donohue, said the government of the glitzy Asian city-state had put forward a bid to host the play-off matches.
“We have an approach from the government of Singapore to look at possibly hosting the finals there. It will be a huge step and one that I would only want to look at as a last resort,” the Irishman told the Nation newspaper here.
“They have a new cricket facility that is absolutely world class and they saw that we took the game successfully to the US, and made an approach to see if we could consider taking the games, especially the finals to Singapore.
“That’s the thing about these franchise leagues. You can take the games and move them around.”
The CPL is in its fifth year following its debut season in 2013, and has morphed into one of the most exciting T20 tournaments on the global calendar.
So far, it has managed to attract superstars like South Africans AB de Villiers and Dale Steyn, along with Sri Lankans Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara.
However, O’Donohue said the tournament was yet to turn a real profit and staging the finals in Singapore could be a huge step towards monetizing the entity.
“For us the Indian market is hugely important. For Singapore, it would open us up to the Indian market,” O’Donohue explained.
“Taking the finals there would be a big step and negative step for CPL because it is a Caribbean tournament and it is the Caribbean that makes it so special.”
He continued: “At the end of the day, we have invested a massive amount of money into the CPL. It continues to require more investment. We thought we’d break even last year. We haven’t done so yet.
“We need to look at other options if Caribbean countries cannot come up with the deals that are required to hold some of these games.”
The CPL is set to be staged from August 1 to September 9 and will once again feature six franchises – Barbados Tridents, Guyana Amazon Warriors, reigning champions Jamaica Tallawahs, Trinbago Knight Riders, St Kitts and Nevis Patriots and St Lucia Zouks.
For the first time last year, matches were staged outside of the Caribbean when Central Broward Regional Park in Florida, United States was used as a venue for some preliminary games.