Karachi:
The Pakistan Cricket Board has decided to hold the eleventh edition of the Pakistan Super League on a limited scale in two cities without fans as part of the government’s austerity campaign, but questions have been raised about the financial impact of this decision.
According to media reports, last year the stadiums earned around 50 billion dollars in revenue from the arrival of fans, which will now be completely eliminated. In such a situation, this important question arises as to how this deficiency will be met.
According to PSL’s financial system, ticket revenue does not go to any individual team but is pooled into a central revenue pool managed by the PCB itself. This pool also includes income from broadcasting rights, sponsorships and other sources.
Revenue sharing follows a fixed formula, with PCB taking a little over five percent while more than 90 percent is shared equally among all franchisees.
For example, PSL 8 (2023) earned around Rs 5.62 billion, of which PCB got around Rs 58 million while the rest was distributed among the franchises. At that time there were six teams in the league and each team received an average of around Rs 84 million.
Since the gate money is also part of the same central pool, this loss will affect all teams equally. However, PCB announced that it will bear this loss itself.
Although it is possible to recover the financial loss, the atmosphere of matches without fans will be affected, which will not be easy to compensate.
