England planning to launch second T20 league

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) is planning to launch a T20 league similar to the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the Big Bash League (BBL), according to a report in the Telegraph on Wednesday (July 27). This would mean that England would be the only country with two domestic T20 competitions scheduled in its domestic calendar.

The tournament is set to go on the floor in early 2018, and will be played over a four-week span. The overall scheme and the payment structure is different from the ongoing leagues around the world. According, the proposal, the counties will be shareholders and the players will be auctioned with the income from broadcast deals to be funding for salaries.

“A team of officials at the England & Wales Cricket Board has been working for months on the structure of a proposal for a new Twenty20 tournament featuring new teams with new identities, which if agreed by the counties will then be sold to broadcasters with one live match per week set to be shown on terrestrial television,” reported the English daily.

The proposals will be sent next month and a decision is likely to be reached by the end of this year. The board has called for a meet of the county chairmen on September 14 to discuss the idea in detail.

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“It is painful that we are not market leaders in T20 but the real sadness is that we are not even keeping up with the rest,” a county chairman was quoted as saying by The Telegraph.

The board has also roped in Deloitte, an accountancy firm, that is working on evaluating the tournament worth and are also financially reviewing the Natwest T20 Blast simultaneously.

The ECB plans to sell the broadcasting rights to earn lucrative deals. However, their current deal with Sky Sports runs till 2019 but it’s highly likely the board will seek another broadcaster.