At every turn nowadays we are reminded that sport is big business.

In mid-week, for example, news broke that the phenomenal Mr Usain Bolt — who has already achieved spectacular financial success — had signed the "fattest" track and field contract ever.

Both Mr Bolt and his contract partner, the German apparel company Puma, coyly declined to give figures. But we don't need to be rocket scientists to recognise that the contract which is to extend to 2013 is worth many millions of US dollars.

As if we needed to be reminded of Mr Bolt's immense branding value, Puma's chairman and CEO Mr Jochen Zeitz is reported as saying that his company intends to make Mr Bolt the central figure in its Olympic marketing programme and use him to help develop footwear and other apparel.

Puma feels able to maximise benefits from Mr Bolt's image and to reward him accordingly because the continuing transformation of visual and digital technology is altering sport and its marketing value at blinding speed.

If we stop to think about it we will readily recognise that even the persistently annoying bickering between the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) and the cricketers' union, West Indies Players' Association, reflects the rapidly changing business environment. For much of that quarrel is about who should rightly own image/branding rights and related esoteric property -- issues that would hardly have arisen 20 years ago.

In the circumstances, television has become indispensable as a business tool for sport. That's why the WICB, which has often come in for strong criticism in this space, deserves commendation for its partnership with the US television conglomerate ESPN in the staging of the recent regional twenty/20 tournament.

Clearly, television, and in particular the courting of the huge US market, is the way to go if Jamaican and Caribbean sport is to be truly professionalised.

That's precisely why former prime minister Mr Edward Seaga wants to re-brand local football.

He visualises a day when it will not be "uncommon to see football games from the Premier League abroad in the areas where our people are resident, like New York... When you penetrate that market, you can talk about earnings from television and you can talk about the inflow of funds that will help us to build a better Premier League".

But that won't come just like that. It will need significant improvement in the quality of our football facilities, for example. Note the comments from the head of the St Elizabeth FA Mr Patrick Malcolm about the "deplorable" state of football fields in his parish and the wider Jamaica.

The truth is that good football can't be played on bad fields. And no matter the quality of the television production -- which itself could be an issue -- inadequacy in the standard of football and the surface on which it is being played can't be glossed over.

Without significant improvement in the facilities, televised Jamaican football productions won't compete with those from the wider region, not to mention the wider world.

But sports facilities won't be improved on a significant and consistent basis across the land unless there is a national focus and an enabling environment. Hence the importance of calls for a National Sports Policy -- renewed most recently by Cricket World Cup 2007 head and current chairman of LIME, Mr Chris Dehring.

The Government has delayed too long. It surely is time for that long-promised National Sports Policy to be laid on the table.

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