Caribbean countries hosting Cricket World Cup (CWC) 2007 were pressured to either sign a contentious Host Venue Agreement (HVA) or lose the opportunity to host the event, officials of at least three Local Organising Committees (LOCs) admitted to the Sunday Observer yesterday.

According to one official, some countries fought unsuccessfully against the conditions in the HVA before surrendering in order to put up a show of Caribbean unity.

The LOC official did not name the countries that opposed the HVA terms. However, he said that insistence against any changes came early from Cricket World Cup West Indies Inc, in accordance with instructions from the International Cricket Council (ICC), owners of the Cricket World Cup.

The refusal to make changes to the HVA was “tantamount to a form of blackmail” and a court of law should be able to determine that the “agreement was substantially in favour of the ICC”, said the LOC official.

“The pressures for compliance became enormous, knowing that we had to collectively show unanimity,” said another LOC official.

The stipulated conditions to which the West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) had committed itself in negotiations with the ICC included security arrangements, overseas marketing with “packaged deals” for tickets, travel and accommodation arrangements and entrances for the 51 matches over a 47-day period from March 13 to April 28.

Last Tuesday, Jamaica’s finance minister, Dr Omar Davies, told a meeting of Parliament’s Standing Finance Committee that the nine Caribbean host countries were dissatisfied with the revenue sharing arrangements with the ICC, and suggested that the courts could be asked to rule on the issue.

“There is a clear need to examine whether there is any legal recourse,” Davies said in response to Opposition MP Clive Mullings’ question as to whether Caribbean governments would share in the revenue the ICC was making from television rights, given the enormous debts the region would be left with after the tournament.

Mullings had raised the question against the background of a press article suggesting that the ICC, world cricket’s governing body, will be making significantly more than US$550 million from its deal with ESPN STAR Sports, as its global media and production partner for audio-visual rights for its events, including CWC 2007, between 2007 and 2015.

Davies said that while he had seen the report, he needed first to check whether it was accurate before giving Mullings a definitive answer. However, he said he was “aware that serious questions are being posed about the way in which the revenues are shared”.

The Caribbean spent more than US$400 million to stage the tournament. The Jamaican Government pumped at least J$8 billion into preparing the country. Of this amount, a combined US$60 million was spent on the Trelawny Multi-purpose Stadium, which hosted warm-up games and the opening ceremony, and on Sabina Park in Kingston where all Group D first-round matches were played.

Yesterday, the LOC officials revealed that strong objections from regional operators and hoteliers to a controversial procurement process pursued by CWC Inc, by which one major United Kingdom-based tour operator was given preferential treatment, were also brushed aside.

Initial protests on other matters from at least four host countries had to also eventually give way in the face of insistence for “uniformity” in compliance with ICC demands before the signing of the HVA document, the Sunday Observer was told.

Antigua and Barbuda’s sports and health minister, John Maginley, who chairs his country’s LOC, had stated his own frustrations by declaring that “in several instances” he and other LOC representatives had “fought with the ICC to get them to temper their demands and their expectations with reality”.

In Barbados, former prime minister and minister of finance, Sir Erskine Sandiford, told yesterday’s Saturday Sun newspaper that the stipulated regulations to which the CWC Inc had genuflected to the ICC for hosting the World Cup were “more intrusive than demands of the International Monetary Fund…”

Now, in the face of dwindling revenue expectations, originally estimated at approximately US$500 million by ICC/CWC Inc and shared at ministerial briefings, the host countries’ collective intake could be less than one-fifth of the overall cost to the region, according to current assessments.

Meanwhile, initiatives are currently being pursued by some LOCs and affiliates of the West Indies Cricket Board to demand that a “due diligence” exercise be undertaken, as a matter of priority, to determine the extent to which countries suffered “financial losses, as well as national pride” by virtue of yielding to the “dictated” arrangements to host the World Cup.