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BCCI’s revenue touches a new high

Special Correspondent

Mumbai: The Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI), primarily its affiliated state associations, the men in blue, hundreds of domestic cricketers and officials are assured of a happy future.

There are good reasons for it as BCCI, which is nearly eight decades old, is all set to announce Rs. 1,000.41 crore as revenue for the 2008 fiscal at its 79th Annual General Body Meeting (AGM) here on September 27.

N. Srinivasan, Treasurer, BCCI, for the last three years had budgeted a revenue of Rs. 862.29 crore for 2007-08, but he and his colleagues in the BCCI members ought to be delighted with the actual revenue realised. In the same period the BCCI’s fixed assets with banks increased to Rs. 1,195 crore. The budgeted revenue for 2008-09 is Rs. 882.57 crore.

Aggressive marketing

The aggressive marketing three years ago by BCCI’s astute marketing committee members, Lalit Modi in particular, can now — after showing revenue of over Rs. 1000 plus crore for the first time — make the Indian cricket establishment claim to be the richest in the world.

Indian cricket has been lucky in the last one-and-a-half decades to be blessed with world-class cricketers like Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, Rahul Dravid, Anil Kumble and V.V.S. Laxman, who have been chiefly instrumental in raising the performance bar of the Indian team and in bringing big money which has augmented BCCI’s finances.

Kudos to administrators

The administrators deserve kudos for demonstrating dynamism, and extracting maximum out of TV broadcasting rights and the corporate world.

Mr. N. Srinivasan completes his three-year term with several credits — regularisation of the registration of the BCCI under the Tami Nadu Societies Act; service tax exemption to the tune of Rs. 33 crore (reported in his 2006-07 report); vigorously pursuing the PILCOM/INDCOM money-related matters.

For 2007-08 money earned from media rights touched a high of Rs. 559.31 crore, surplus from tours was Rs. 226.73 crore, interest income was Rs. 76.15 crore and income from other sources was Rs. 138.22 crore. This works out to a total of Rs. 1000.41 crore as against Rs. 651.81 crore for 2006-07.

The BCCI has reserved a sum of Rs. 371.89 crore as TV subvention to be disbursed to the State associations. A sum of Rs. 203 crore from the IPL franchise fee would be awarded as a further subvention. The State associations are expected to receive between Rs. 15 and Rs. 20 crore each with the centres that staged Test matches and one-day internationals in the year 2007-08 and IPL matches likely to receive more money.

With the increase in revenue, the players — international and domestic — too have gained. A sum of Rs. 132 crore — Rs. 66 crore each to international and domestic players — would be disbursed. Last year, it was Rs. 43 crore, which means an increase of Rs. 23 crore.

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