The tug of war between two telecommunication giants connected with West Indies cricket, created the controversy over sponsorship issues of West Indies cricket team. One is Cables & Wireless, who had been sponsoring the West Indies for more than 18 years till 07. The other one is Irish based Digicel who signed $ 20 million to sponsor the West Indies team now.

The whole drama started to evolve in August 08 when, Digicel found the Stanford about to tie up with C&W as a sponsor of Stanford super series. Digicel never wanted its competitor to encroach in to the series. They filed an injection in the London High court seeking WICB’s withdrawal of its approval of the Stanford series. The court verdict is expected in October 08.

As per WICB sponsorship rules, the players are not allowed to have any personal endorsements of the major sponsor’s competitors. Now, to ease the situation ahead of the Stanford series on 01 November, Digicell proposed a new compromising deal to WICB. They need the Twenty20 team against England to wear official West Indies kit with Digicel brand. The deal also emphasizes that; no other telecom company should be involved in the Stanford series.

The board should pay the cost also to Digicel. To balance the deal, the company is ready to give up certain rights which they enjoy as part of exclusive sponsorship rights. That includes broadcast rights, branded pitch mates, sight screen, perimeter boards, advertising, content rights etc. These rights can be used by WICB for commercial use. Actually, Digicel would like to settle down the issues on the basis of this compromising deal by negotiating with WICB and Stanford.

Even though the deal seems one sided, WICB has to agree with it as they have no other option to back up the series. If they don’t they would find their players in trouble due to non-approval of the Stanford series. ECB has already procured prior approval from ICC and hence they are the least to be affected by this crisis.

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3.25 Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."

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