The International Cricket Council (ICC) is seeking to engage with the World Cricketers Association (WCA) in its well-targeted plan to develop, market, & promote a mobile gaming platform. One of the main ingredients in this upcoming project is to secure players' rights, which ICC plans to secure directly through its member boards rather than going through the players' union.
Also in ICC's radar is an additional consideration of retired players like Sachin Tendulkar & MS Dhoni, for example, who are currently not under the BCCI. Any upcoming ICC-backed project that omits such icons would feel a bit incomplete.
"A clear direction from the April (ICC Board meeting in Harare) meeting was that all players' rights for this project would be secured through the members. The ICC was not to contract player rights through a third party, such as the World Cricketers Association," an ICC note stated to members who attended the Annual Conference in Singapore.
The same rule applied to Tendulkar & Dhoni will also apply to other retired players from other cricketing nations. The upcoming player-backed gaming initiative was discussed during the recent ICC meeting in Singapore, where the management also requested to form a committee of members to deal with such challenging & complex matters. The ICC also aims to solve all the pointers of projects, including player rights acquisition and player representation, before its next meeting in October.
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"The aim is to have a preferred partner identified for approval at the October board meetings. (The ICC) Management will be in touch with members shortly to formalize the license of rights required for the mobile game. These agreements will need to be completed by October," the note added.
Notably, the ICC had earlier published an EOI document on its official website. All the invited candidates had to detail their overall & relevant experience, technical capabilities, and financial positions and proposed plans for leveraging rights. Based on all these criteria, a shortlist of qualified candidates were called up to receive the ITT.
ICC anticipates significant revenue from the gaming project: Sanjog Gupta
ICC CEO Sanjog Gupta stated that ICC is anticipating a huge windfall and revenue from the upcoming gaming project, which is also set to be distributed among all its member boards.
"The global gaming market size was valued at USD 249.55 billion in 2022 and is anticipated to grow from USD 281.77 billion in 2023 to USD 665.77 billion by 2030, exhibiting a CAGR of 13.1% during the forecast period (2023-2030). Asia Pacific dominated the gaming market with a market share of 46.03% in 2022," Fortune Business Insights reported last year.
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"The online gaming industry (in the country) is estimated to double to INR 66,000 crore by 2028, with the potential to create an additional 2 to 3 lakh jobs in the next few years,” as per PwC India.
A & W Capital appointed as consultant
Notably, ICC also has appointed A & W Capital as an independent consultant to help in designing distribution & revenue generation for the upcoming highly anticipated mobile gaming project. Following the grand announcement, a lot of Competitive Request for Proposals (RFP) processes, which saw high-profile seven organizations come forward, including Deloitte, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), and Sports Five.
A & W Capital ultimately edged the other organizations due to its vast and deep knowledge of the Indian mobile gaming industry. With the officials in London & Mumbai, the organization is set to present its report, covering the independent valuation of the rights bundle & distribution models, in the next ICC meeting in October.
"The shortlisted organizations will be requested to provide further details on the game such as what type of game they plan to make and how they plan to market and promote the game, which will form the first stage of the ITT evaluation and, if successful at the first stage, the management will then consider their commercial offer for securing the rights," the note said.
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ICC is expecting the responses from the shortlisted companies by early September, after which ICC will proceed with detailed presentation, selection, and negotiation phases with the successful candidate.
