The Limacol CPL & its Financier, Founder Ajmal Khan

By Sean Devers

(KAITEUR NEWS)The West Indies Cricket Board first announced the plans for the Caribbean Premier League in September 2012. On December 13, 2012, the WICB announced that they had finalized an agreement with Ajmal Khan owner of Verus International, for the funding of the league. Nigerian born Billionaire Ajmal Khan is the Owner, Financier, Founder and Chairman of the Limacol Caribbean Premier League CPL.As part of the agreement, the WICB will receive additional funding from Verus International for additional retainer contracts for players in addition to the annual retainer contracts the board currently funds.

Guyana Amazon Warriors Franchise owner is Guyanese Dr. Ranjisingh ‘Bobby’ Ramroop, owner of the New Guyana Pharmaceutical Corporation (New GPC) and several media outfits including the Guyana Times, and five radio frequencies.
SEALED Guyana franchise partner Dr Ranjisingh Bobby Ramroop (left) and CPL CEO Damien O'Donohoe after the signing of the contract. (Photo by CPLT20)

SEALED Guyana franchise partner Dr Ranjisingh Bobby Ramroop (left) and CPL CEO Damien O’Donohoe after the signing of the contract. (Photo by CPLT20)

Ramroop also owns the title sponsor under the Brand Limacol which has the branding rights for the tournament which is named the Limacol CPL. CEO of the CPL is Damian O’ Donahue.

The Jamaica Tallawahs beat the Guyana Amazon Warriors in the 2013 final, while the 2014 and 2015 tournaments will take place from 11 July to 16 August and 21 June to 26 July respectively. The ‘Warriors’ will play three games at the Providence Stadium on July 17, 19 & 20.

The LCPL is expected to net a significant sum from Television rights and signed a two-year deal with UK sports broadcaster, BT Sport, to show exclusive live coverage of the tournament.

Sport will show live coverage of all thirty CPL matches this year, with former England spinner Graeme Swann forming part of the commentary team.

UK fans will be able to catch all of the live action from one of the world’s most exciting T20 competitions, and each match will also be repeated in one-hour highlights shows throughout the tournament.

The Caribbean Premier League (CPL) is an annual Twenty20 cricket tournament held in the Caribbean. It was created in 2013 and replaced the Caribbean Twenty20.

Khan is the founder of Verus Capital in 1985, and later the merchant banking company Verus International Corporation in 1999, he has made millions turning companies into successes around the world. “Verus Capital has invested in companies in the internet, media, biotechnology and real estate fields. From 1985 to 1993, Verus Capital acquired and resold over US$2 billion in real estate. Khan is a citizen of Canada but currently lives in Barbados.

Khan’s interest in the Caribbean Premier League might remind of Stanford, but the WICB seems confident it won’t be a repeat.

“The CPL is going to be the one to make sure that every single player it hires or it retains is going to be paid, for which I am responsible,” Ajmal Khan said.

However, by placing its T20 series, formerly known as the Caribbean T20, in the hands of a private entrepreneur, the WICB showed a lot of faith in Khan, Verus, and the Caribbean Premier League.

Five years ago, their faith in another Caribbean-based foreign businessman backfired in a big way. Allen Stanford, now imprisoned in the United States for massive fraud, ran his Stanford 20/20 series with the full blessings of the WICB up to 2008. The ECB also became entangled in the Texan’s cricket dealings, sending a team to play the Stanford All-Stars in a match in which the players on the winning team each earned $1million. The Stanford bandwagon came to a halt with his arrest in 2009.

In July 2013, however, the WICB allowed Khan to roll out the first edition of the CPL, a franchise-based operation which had teams based in six territories and included not just Caribbean cricketers but professionals from around the world.

The WICB has sanctioned the CPL and spoke confidently about the financial security the venture will bring to a larger pool of players in the region and said the CPL would fund the contracts of the Region’s First-Class players.

It is also the CPL and Khan who are the guarantors of the players’ salaries. Khan himself confirmed this. “The most important thing in my life is my reputation. I have a track record of what I’ve done in my life… I’m not a person who reneges on anything I do… Obviously within the fiduciary duty of the WICB, they needed to make sure that I had the means to do this and they’ve done enough due diligence on me to know there’s enough to run the league for the next number of years… to make sure every single player is paid… The CPL is going to be the one to make sure that every single player it hires or it retains is going to be paid, for which I am responsible,” Khan promised when the CPL was launched.

The CPL deal with the West Indies Board is for 20 years. The WICB has declared that it has done its due diligence on Khan. But four years ago, that was also said about Stanford. Their interest in cricket as business aside, though, Khan appears a man of different stock to his predecessor.

But business, not philanthropy is what the CPL is about. The Stanford 20/20 series, supported entirely by Stanford’s millions, was not a money-making enterprise. Neither has been the West Indies Board’s subsequent competition. Khan is thus entering uncharted waters in trying to make the CPL a profitable business and a product to rival the T20 leagues of India and Australia.

The small economies and populations of the Caribbean will not by themselves make this possible. It is why Khan and his colleagues are counting on attracting interest well beyond the region.

“The only way that I have an interest in doing anything is if I know that I can sustain it,” he says. “The reality is that we have less than eight million people that live in the Caribbean. If you are in India, we would have 1.3 billion people to go and attract. The only way that this is going to be successful and be sustainable is if we can put together, basically, a global partnership, where the world will see this as a product not made for one market.

“The first key thing that we need to do is to bring the local, the regional and the international bodies and partners to be able to create the CPL into something where it becomes a global audience.”

Khan is quick to declare he is not corporation sole. “This is not a one-man show. I don’t believe in that, first of all. This is not about me, this is not about my ego, this is not about the money I have. This is about creating and building something in partnership with everyone to make this exciting.”

This year more overseas stars have decided to participate in what should be a bigger and better tournament, hyped as the Biggest Party in Sport. St Kitts where the finals will be played after a massive concert to bring the curtains down on the event, has been included as a venue for the first time.

Six Regional Franchise teams will vie for this year’s title and the right to play in the Champions League in South Africa, namely Antigua Hawksbills, Barbados Tridents, Guyana Amazon Warriors, Jamaica Tallawahs, St Lucia Dukes, Trinidad Red Steel.