CARIBBEAN Premier League (CPL) Operations Director Michael Hall says although it may present some logistical challenges, the T20 tournament moving to a structure with seven or eight teams some day is possible.

Jamaica is now negotiating to return to the tournament with a new franchise, which a group from the Indian Premier League would own. This means that unless one of the existing teams withdraws, the CPL will move to a seven-team format when Jamaica’s team is established.

It would be the most teams ever competing in the CPL in a season as although teams have withdrawn in the past, other franchises were created to take their spot. The most recent example of this is the Tallawahs disbanding in Jamaica for the 2024 season, and moving to Antigua and Barbuda months later to compete as the Falcons.

Hall told the Sunday Observer that should Jamaica return, it would not be a novel idea for organisers as they have explored the possibility of having more than six teams while planning in the past.

“I have done scenarios of tournament schedules involving seven and eight teams many times over,” Hall said. “There has always been interest from investors to come in. This interest may not have materialised into an actual franchise, because of one reason or another, but we have to be forward-thinking as a tournament and as an event. We can incorporate a seventh team, or an eighth team for that matter.”

Hall says he drafted a seven-team schedule for the 2025 season while the 2024 season occurred — just in case there was a need for it.

“Yes, we can accommodate additional teams, and we certainly would want to,” he said. “We don’t want the league to remain at six teams for its entire life. We want it to grow.”

During the 2018 season the Tallawahs played three of its five home games in Lauderhill, Florida, as its owners sought to address lowered income because of dwindling attendance numbers at Sabina Park in Kingston. They saw Lauderhill as ideal because of a diaspora in that area which they estimated was hungry to see live cricket, which was not frequent until the launch of Major League Cricket in the United States in 2023.

Hall is not opposed to the idea of Lauderhill entering CPL with its own franchise but says certain factors would probably pose challenges.

“It’s not impossible but there are other players now — you’re talking about Major League Cricket,” Hall said while warning that expansion in that area may appear to be encroaching on another entity’s territory. “I certainly don’t think it would be a challenge to play games there but as far as establishing a franchise there — I wouldn’t say it’s impossible but it might be a little more detailed in terms of whether doing that would be a breach of the rights that the people that run Major League Cricket would have by having a franchise geographically there but not playing in their tournament. All of those things have to be thought about.”

But Hall says should expansion take place specifically in the Caribbean, it would be feasible.

“For additional teams residing in the Caribbean, it’s definitely a possibility and would not be an insurmountable logistical challenge at all,” he said.

A challenge he mentioned regarding logistics, especially as it relates to when Jamaica played the tournament, is distance travelled.

The Tallawahs was the only franchise based in the western Caribbean, and while teams would normally require flights lasting no longer than 30 to 45 minutes between eastern Caribbean islands, travelling to and from Jamaica for games would require flights between two and a half and three hours. This increases the cost of plane fare and may even expose players to fatigue.

The Republic Bank CPL 2025 will feature 34 matches from Thursday, August 14 to Sunday, September 21.