The Champions League T20 tournament, a battle for greatness between the best T20 teams across the franchise leagues in the world, is set to make its comeback as the ICC plans to relaunch the tournament next year.
This decision to relaunch the premier T20 tournament was taken by key member countries at the International Cricket Council’s annual conference in Singapore, as per the Sydney Morning Herald.
But at the same time, the ICC also discussed either curtailing Test cricket to the best teams or applying a two-tier system. A decision on the same is expected by the end of the year, after the ICC formalized a working group to reshape the game’s calendar from 2027 onwards.
“You have to make hard choices. And there are very clear indicators of what fans want. There is enough data to suggest what direction the game is going in. If you continue to serve a product that no one wants, one—that product will continue to suffer, and two—the ecosystem around the product will continue to suffer. Blackberry disappeared at some point. It was a device that all of us had; it was a device that all of us were in the habit of using, then it disappeared, and it was replaced by another product,” Gupta had said on the MCC’s World Cricket Connects panel at Lord’s in 2023.
The first incarnation of the T20 Champions League began in 2008 and ran until 2014, when the firm then known as ESPN Star cut its losses after paying an exaggerated rights cost of approximately $1 billion for the event, having lost out on the first rights to the Indian Premier League.
Cricket Australia, India's BCCI, and Cricket South Africa were league partners, while ESPN Star's rights payments helped to fund the Big Bash League's early years before it began to generate significant broadcast rights revenue in 2013.
But since then, the T20 leagues have mushroomed, and one of the issues the new T20 Champions League will face is players determining which teams they will play for. Some of the world's best T20 players can compete in at least two, and frequently four or five, separate franchise leagues each year.
It has not yet been established how the new league's finances would be divided. Lobbying has persisted for a parallel model in which Saudi Arabia sponsors a circuit of T20 competitions around the world, but the kingdom's future role may be to host the Champions League.
It is anticipated to report initial findings and suggestions to the ICC board, chaired by India's Jay Shah, by the end of the year.
Gupta, the former head of sport at Indian broadcaster JioStar, was involved in the worldwide players' organization's recent assessment of cricket's calendar. But he has also stated that the market will determine how much Test and international cricket is played in the future.
(Sydney Morning Herald inputs)
