The Champions League T20 (CLT20), which was jointly organized by the respective cricketing heads of India, South Africa and Australia has been discontinued with immediate effect. The competition was conceptualized to bring together all the champion T20 teams from all over the world on a single platform. The decision came just the day after the historic IPL verdict came from the Lodha committee. There was a long rumour that thisleague, which started from 2009, was about to be called off and today it finally was. Lets take a look at the 5 reasons which led to the demise of the league:
1) Dwindling spectators
The tournament, from its very inception failed to draw crowds to the stadiums, especially in the matches which featured nondescript teams coming from far off places like Caribbean and New Zealand. Even it happened that matches are being conducted in near to empty stadiums ! It clearly failed to make a market amongst the Indian audience, which was the main target.
2) Plummeting Ratings
If the spectators are not coming in the stadiums, then its highly wrong to think they will watch the matches on the net and television. With the exception of the matches involving the IPL teams, the league failed to generate enough ratings which also serves as a prime reason for its early foreclosure. The tournament could not attract enough sponsors also which led to the disclosure of the tournament.
3) Bleeding broadcaster
The official broadcasters of the CLT20, Star Sports, who bid for about a billion dollars aspparently have been losing 100 million dollars a year and its officials have raised the issue at different fora over the last couple of years, since its very beginning back in 2009. Without their big bucks, the tournament was anyway a no-go .
4) Players choosing IPL clubs over home clubs
There have been numerous instances where players chose to play in these competition for their IPL franchises and gladly ignoring their country’s clubs whom they originally whom they used to represent for monetary gains. Although the IPL teams and the players prospered from this decision but the country clubs struggled badly in the tournament without the services of the key players, which in turn reduced the intensity of the competition.
5) Unavailability of RR and CSK
From yesterday’s IPL verdict, two high profile IPL teams, Rajasthan Royals and Chennai Super Kings were banned for 2 years which barred these teams from further taking part in the tournament. If the CLT20 would happened this year, The Royals and SuperKings would have been taking part by virtue of being in the top 3 teams of the last concluded 2015 edition of IPL. But with no RR and CSK, the tournament would have been a disaster and would not have helped its cause.