CWI CEO calls ICC US$12.8M loan a short-term fix amid deep financial losses

Cricket West Indies chief executive Chris Dehring says a US$12.82 million loan from the International Cricket Council is only a short-term cushion for deeper financial trouble at the regional board.

The ICC approved the facility after CWI projected a US$26 million loss for the current financial year. That forecast follows a US$28 million net loss for the period ending September 2025. The decision was taken at the ICC’s annual board meeting in Edinburgh earlier this month. Dehring spoke on CVM’s Fan Central on Tuesday.

He stressed the loan covers only this fiscal year and does not solve what he described as a long-term challenge: reshaping West Indies cricket to match how the global game now works. Boards elsewhere, he said, are already cutting and reorganising; Australia, for example, has made significant staff reductions.

Dehring pointed to upheaval in India’s television market as a major pressure point. Countries that once relied on large rights deals from India are finding those agreements harder to close. With West Indies due to play in India next year, CWI is working to finalise its own television rights arrangement there, he said.

More broadly, he argued cricket has entered a new commercial era that forces every board, including CWI, to change how it operates.

Drawing a parallel with the Caribbean’s historic sugar industry, Dehring said West Indies cricket was once a premium product the world sought, yet production methods stayed too costly and outdated while competitors modernised. The region lost its sugar advantage, he said, and risked the same fate in cricket unless it reinvented how players are developed and how the product is delivered.

That means moving away from a model built on constant travel across the Caribbean for matches that drive heavy spending on flights and hotel rooms, and finding more efficient ways to produce and present West Indies cricket.