Warren Deutrom speaks
Cricket Ireland CEO discusses Ireland's fixture uncertainty and the financial picture for 2024
On March 7th, Cricinfo published an article in which Cricket Ireland’s performance director Richard Holdsworth was quoted in a way that first raised doubts about the future of Ireland’s planned home series against Australia. Later that day, The Irish Times reported that the series was indeed gone from the summer calendar, while South Africa’s tour would be moved to the UAE and the Euro Slam would once again be pushed back.
In the intervening weeks, Cricket Ireland (CI) denied to comment publicly on such reports, or their employee’s comments. They did not want to speak prior to a board meeting which was held on Tuesday. In advance of that meeting, Cricket Europe reported that the planned home Test against Zimbabwe was now at risk after an ICC meeting on March 14th at which CI was not successful at securing additional funds from the sport’s governing body. The ICC withholds a portion of the money promised annually to each country in order to protect against future TV rights deals declining in value. CI wanted access to that money to secure their budget for this year. It was not released.
Amongst that backdrop of events, last Tuesday’s board meeting was supposed to decide on the future of the Test match and all other fixtures among Ireland’s Future Tours Programme (FTP - the ICC’s provisional schedule). However, in a press release the following day, only fixtures against Pakistan before the World Cup were confirmed. The reason? The Friday before the board meeting, more financial uncertainty was placed upon CI and the board could not sign off on fixtures.
So now we wait. As CI attempts to figure out exactly how much money they have to spend this summer, all fixtures after the T20 World Cup, both for men and women, have not been finalised. A deadline has been set of the week of April 8th to sort the budget, pencil in matches and make an announcement.
Given this picture of volatility and lack of clarity, CI had to say something publicly to explain the situation to fans. On Thursday, three weeks after public comments first started this cycle of confusion, CEO Warren Deutrom released a statement. The following day, he accepted a phone call to answer questions about said statement.
In a nutshell, Deutrom says that CI haven’t been given as much ICC money as everyone thinks and they want to spread any increase across the grassroots game, instead of spending it all on international fixtures. The counter position is that a series against the World Champions was a significant opportunity to broadcast the sport on this island, sell tickets and generate much-needed revenue. There is also an argument that full membership is not living up to its expectation in terms of benefiting Irish cricket, that Ireland has made FTP commitments that can’t be fulfilled and that recent chaotic periods of frequent budget reshuffles and delayed announcements have done damage to Cricket Ireland’s image. These points were put to the company’s CEO.
The easiest, and fairest, way to take in what was said is to simply read it all and make up your own mind. Rather than editorialise Deutrom’s comments into any particular narrative, what follows is a transcription of his statement - which wasn’t published on the CI website - in full, followed by the subsequent interview as it took place.
Statement from Cricket Ireland CEO Warren Deutrom:
“The Board of Cricket Ireland met this week to discuss a range of matters, including fixtures, budget and the new Strategic Plan.
“In terms of the Strategic Plan, the Board has reinforced its commitment to growing cricket at all levels of the game and has mandated that any uplift in funding to be spread across the game - not just the high performance end of our operations. This has been a reset in the way we have operated over recent years as we moved through the early stages of Full Membership. What this means is that there also needs to be a reset in expectations from the cricket public. There is, at times, a sense that unless there’s more international cricket then Cricket Ireland is not doing its job. This is absolutely not the reality of our role as a national governing body. We will be re-balancing our investment in the game over coming years, and this will necessitate a new way of doing things at times.
“As for the budget, in line with the Strategic Plan development, we have been developing what is as much a budget for Irish cricket, as a budget for Cricket Ireland. The budget will illustrate how we are translating the Board’s mandate on-the-ground and delivering at all levels. However, all of Irish cricket’s needs will not be met overnight.
“This has been reinforced by the recent clarification of our expected ICC funding. We have always been optimistic but tempered in our expectations of new funding. It is true that some speculation has not been helpful as it served to raise hopes to unrealistic levels. The ICC will indeed provide an uplift, but we will all need to reset our expectations as we adjust our planning accordingly.
“The new ICC funding cycle we will see Cricket Ireland receive around US$70M from ICC member distributions over the next four years. While a welcome increase, a few points need to be acknowledged – most notably, the ICC has advised the payment schedule is heavily weighted to the backend of the cycle with around 40% being received in 2027*. In addition, we have a €5M loan repayment to repay over the next four years, we are required to find ways of mitigating against high levels of inflation on our cost of operations, and we need to meet the Board’s mandate on investment across the game.
“In fact, as a result of our commitment to grassroots and pathway structures, we have made some hard choices regarding the hosting of some international cricket – most notably, the proposed series against Australia Men which will now be moved out of 2024 to another window.
“While our first instincts were to try and keep as much international cricket as we could, we have had to make some tough but much-deliberated choices to achieve a sustainable programme of cricket and meet our broader obligations. As cricket administrators, these are unenviable decisions, but we had to acknowledge that we couldn’t deliver both within this season without impacting negatively upon investments in areas such as the club fund, facilities, Provincial Unions, kids programmes and professionalisation of match officials, increasing remuneration for women and a host of other areas of the sport that require support. In terms of the Australia Men’s series, we will work with Cricket Australia on finding another opportunity to play bilateral fixtures.
“With regard to the budget, a number of unexpected last-minute changes prior to the recent Board Meeting in revenue and cost estimates meant we held over submitting a final budget to the Board to April.
“As a consequence, we are in a position to announce fixtures in early summer, but late summer internationals won’t be announced until April. While not ideal, we decided to take a prudent approach to our finances and we thank the cricket public for their patience while we resolve the final outstanding matters. We will initially release those fixtures that have been approved to date – and you’ve seen that already with the Wolves in Nepal, women’s series against Thailand prior to the T20 Qualifier next month and Pakistan Men’s T20I series.
“We commit to keeping the cricket public informed as key Board decisions are made. We thank fans for their patience and will provide further updates as soon as possible.”
* If the ICC has replicated its financial targets in the next rights cycle (2028-2031) the money will be distributed. If it hasn’t, then this money may be held back to the next cycle.
Before progressing to the interview, it’s worth highlighting a few things. Firstly, this is the first time CI have confirmed that the Australia series is not happening.
Secondly, Deutrom discusses “last-minute” changes before Tuesday’s board meeting which changed the financial picture, creating more budgetary chaos. He goes into more detail on that below, but for clarity, on Friday CI were told that the cost of something in the budget for this summer would increase by around €300,000. Given the already precarious financial picture, this development forced a rethink and a delay of signing off on fixtures.
Thirdly, Deutrom says Ireland will receive $70 million in four years from the ICC, with 40% of that deferred until 2027. Ireland will receive roughly $13.1 million this year. As Deutrom mentioned, CI have a 5 million loan to pay back to the ICC and repayments will eat into any funds coming in.
While not as much as was anticipated due to the above factors, Ireland are still receiving at least $2 million more this year than last. If you discount last year’s loan, which was separate from the broadcast income, Ireland have more than doubled their ICC funding this year.
If not going towards playing Australia, a home Test or other fixtures, where is that money being spent? In his statement, Deutrom spoke about spreading money out among the grassroots, not just the international game. The subsequent interview began with a request for more clarity on that commitment.
Question: “People can understand the desire to spread more love to the grassroots. Given the postponement of fixtures is more publicly visible than investment into the local game, are you going to give detailed breakdowns of what is is set to be done at grassroots level?”
Warren Deutrom: “Yes, absolutely. And why hasn’t that been done yet? Because we haven’t issued our strategy. One of the things the board did agree on Tuesday was, we approved the strategy. In the next fortnight or so we’re going to ask management to tweak the desired outcomes. Once we’ve done that, we now have the full picture and we have the strategy timing aligned with our budget timing.”
Q: “In the statement, you said there was a last minute change to the board meeting which means you can’t yet announce fixtures scheduled for after the World Cup. Can you give any more detail on what those changes were that mean people have to wait until April for fixture lists?”
WD: “In relation to specifics, I’m not in a position yet to notify or make a recommendation to the board in relation to the actual fixtures themselves. I suppose if you were making a determination as to why, or putting it in a nutshell as to why we’re unable to make a recommendation, it comes down to two things. One, our lack of financial reserves which give us the bandwidth to absorb financial shocks. If we suddenly have a reversal of €300/400,000 which took place just before the board [meeting], which was in addition to, not necessarily a reversal, but suddenly ‘you’re going to have to pay this much extra’ which wasn’t anticipated… you can imagine if you don’t have reserves that throws various things up into the air.
“We have a mandate from the board to ensure we are rebalancing our spend. Parachuting in fixtures or taking stuff out of other areas of the business risks the philosophy of rebalancing for the entirety of Irish cricket, simply by saying ‘we’re going to have to cut this stuff out now, aren’t we?’ So there’s the financial component to it and the second element is the availability of venues and pitches around the country. One thing effectively impacts another. You can’t parachute in and out fixtures around the country. If you have a Test match or an ODI, it takes a pitch a lot longer to recover from its usage than it does for a T20 where you might be able to re-use the same pitch.
“That effectively is why every single impact in terms of timing, in terms of cost, has an impact on our ability based on our deficit of money and facilities to be able to swing on a dime in relation to saying, ‘that’s happened, this means this.’ It just takes us time to get through the fixtures.
Q: “Between the ICC meeting not going as desired and the last minute additional costs identified close to the board meeting, there are a lot of late changes. Is this a case of CI unwisely drawing up budgets based on factors that are volatile, of not being adaptable more generally or would you say you have had the financial rug pulled from underneath you?”
WD: “Every single business wants to plan on the basis of certainty, you want to be able to progress based on your financial position. Our financial position effectively means it’s a double edged sword: you get a lot of money from the ICC but the overall quantum of what you receive, you have greater dependance on single revenue source. When your revenue source that is your largest revenue source requires a last minute adjustment, inevitably it means you’re going to have, ‘right, we’re not expecting this, we now have to adapt.’
“What the discussion around the board on Tuesday was, we now know what our quantum for 4 years is going to be. We now that what we received in 2024 is going to be the baseline for ‘25 and ‘26, that gives us the ability to be a lot more structured in our planning. The other major revenue source in the business is, other than government funding, which is relatively stable of the period, which allows us to plan well, the other great uncertainty is around our broadcast revenues. Those are attached to our fixture list and to the FTP. That is fixed until 2026, we did a broadcast deal until 2026 precisely to bring some certainty to what we will try to do.
“Unfortunately what we’ve discovered is, the P&L (profit and loss) for that is, it’s not just ‘Hooray we’re getting millions from a broadcaster,’ we have to adjust that according to a P&L. What we’ve found is that the P is fixed but the L is changing based on the costs and inflation. The costs of our broadcast production have more than doubled since we did that deal in 2021. These are all factors that we have to bring into play. But we now know between government funding, broadcast revenue, ICC revenue, pretty much that is going to be 90 per cent plus of our revenue over the next three years. It gives us a lot more certainty in terms of planning.
“There was always going to be uncertainty prior to the ICC funding put in place. It is put in place and now we can plan more robustly.”
Q: “Can fans expect more concrete plans for fixtures and budgets earlier in the piece in years going forward?”
WD: “Yes. An uncharacteristically terse and brief response from me, but yes.”
Q: “On March 7th, a CI employee was quoted by Cricinfo on the Australia disruption. By my count, it took 21 days for further public comment on that issue to come from the organisation. Can you understand people’s frustration that there is that gap and an information vacuum was allowed to build?”
WD: “Of course. What I would say is that, where there were quotes, I suspect they were unattributed quotes, we were not yet ready to make a statement. Those who are providing that information are doing so in an unauthorised fashion.
“In many ways, the key thing for most businesses is to provide certainty. No one likes the drip feed of information but inevitably there are going to be people who provide that information in a way which all it does is increase speculation. If we had the opportunity, we’d prefer to go out in a much more concerted fashion providing certainty about everything, rather than those who might drip feed information in a way which isn’t structured, doesn’t provide a complete picture and doesn’t provide context.
“But of course, we want to be out on the front foot giving the public, the media, our fans certainty. We want to be able to give our stakeholders certainty, I’m talking about our provinces as well so they can go out and issue interprovincial competitions to enable the clubs to harmonise that with our club leagues.
“We began planning our fixtures around September time, but bearing in mind the stage of development of Irish cricket, I know it sounds boring to keep saying it but the development of our permanent infrastructure, the sheer dearth of high-quality pitches that we have around the country, the fact we play those matches in club grounds and clubs want certainty to develop their own fixtures for their own leagues, we’re all one inter-connected ecosystem. It’s extraordinary how one blockage in the system, albeit for our largest revenue stream, has such a knock-on impact.
“It really is incredibly frustrating for everyone in the system, we want to be out there as early as possible doing that. Now that we know our baseline funding for the next 2/3 years, it’s going to be a minimum of what we believe it is, we can begin to plan. Let’s look at the FTP for ‘25, ‘26 and let’s bring certainty much earlier for everyone.”
Q: “Speaking of the FTP, your statement talked about resetting expectations. Have we bitten off more than we can chew in regard to the current FTP?”
WD: “We sit down, we did the FTP with the other full members just in advance of Covid. It was in late 2019. That effectively is put in place because the majority of the full members have their FTPs done significantly far in advance. It’s done in the broadcast rights cycles of the full members, within which we inevitably need to fall, particularly since we were a brand new full member. That was 4, 4.5 years in advance of us knowing our definitive revenues from ICC. You can only go to market with your broadcast rights once you have an FTP. We are having to put that information in place before we have any information around our commensurate revenue streams.
“There is a very significant element of guess work around that. At that time as well, the World Cup Super League was in place, we put in place an FTP on the principle of having three + three (matches in different formats). At that stage there was no expectation the ICC was to reverse its decision to have anything other than the World Cup Super League…”
Q: “Sorry to cut across you, but you’re talking about sitting down in 2019 to schedule this. Are you talking about the current FTP, which started in 2024?”
WD: “That FTP was ‘19-23. The current one, we sat down, it would have been probably late ‘21 I think.”
Q: “Ok, so we’re into the second year of this FTP. Last year, all the FTP commitments on the Irish side (at home) were fulfilled, even if Bangladesh was moved to Chelmsford. But going forward, if people are being told that expectations need to be reset, and plenty of expectations are being set by the FTP up until 2027, are there any re-assurances you can offer to people who are concerned that more FTP commitments won’t be fulfilled?”
WD: “One of the key things the board wants us to do this year is, we are going to have a very long look at ‘25 and ‘26 and I think we’re going to make sure that, now we know what the ICC funding is, now we know what the vast majority of our revenue is, we’re going to have a look if we can fulfil all those commitments bearing in mind the rebalancing objectives the board has set to make sure we’re going to be producing a budget and investing in all areas of Irish cricket and not just in the men’s senior fixtures, FTP wise.”
Q: “We have relatively detailed figures of what the ICC funding picture is now, despite it not being as much as anticipated or hoped, it’s still significantly more than what has been offered in previous years. If we’re the only full member where cricket isn’t a significant sport with massive historical infrastructure, and we are now getting funding in theory as a full member should be, and we’re still moving or postponing fixtures, can you say full membership was a benefit? Did we in hindsight need to wait for that better infrastructure before we started taking on these fixture commitments?”
WD: “Let’s put it this way. What incentive would there have been for any of the government agencies, public funding authorities, to support any permanent development of infrastructure if there wasn’t going to be any sense of how that investment would be returned? Through increased fixtures, through increased visibility of the sport, through increased investment into CI to be able to grow the game.
“We had to take a risk. What’s the alternative? You remain an associate member whose ambitions are always going to be capped by the visibility of your sport in your country, the amount of fixtures you play, the amount you invest in your permanent infrastructure based on the chance that might be returned at some stage by the amount of cricket played, bums on seats, spectators, broadcast visibility.
“I would argue, looking at the achievements of the sport, its full membership, its ability to develop a high performance centre, whether it be the investment in more fixtures and we have played more fixtures since we became a full member; the ability to professionalise our senior women’s team, to put more funding into our pathway system, to actually have a women’s Super Series, to put in place an emerging provincial union, a feeder system into the interpros, the ability to go to Zimbabwe and have a whitewash in women’s cricket (Ireland won all but one game, a draw, on that tour).
“The ability to have an U19 men’s competition in which we just had our best finish and beat New Zealand, the fact we just had our first men’s Test match win, I would point to an awful lot of those achievements as something that says there is no way we would have achieved that if we remained an associate member, maxing out all of the ability for funding, growth, ability to play extras. We’re going through a phase of growing pains, everyone wants everything to be developed all at the same time.
“The day after we achieved full membership in June 2017, I attended a function in Dublin. At that, I said ICC has given us this honour, this prestigious opportunity to be a full member, based not on the fact that we are a finished article, but on the fact that we have massive potential to grow our sport in Ireland. It doesn’t mean that we have massive permanent infrastructure, that we have 18 first class domestic feeder clubs, it doesn’t mean that we have tens of millions or hundreds of millions of broadcast infrastructure, that is our objective now to grow. It is all about understanding that it is going to be a growth phase for the sport.
“We’ve gone from €8-9 million to turning over €16 million this year. It isn’t just measured in the quantity of men’s international cricket that we play, it has to be ensuring that we are, as the ECB once said, the national governing body that develops the sport from playground to Test arena. It can’t just be focused consistently in the top end. We have grown our provinces from being very small, entirely voluntary organisations, to ones where we are investing seven-figure sums into the entirety of that system.
“We pay for the interprovincial structure, the Super Series structure, the emerging competition. We’re putting in place junior international pathway cricket, it can’t just be measured in men’s international fixtures.”
Q: “You mentioned associate membership. Scotland, an associate nation, have been prominent in the press recently. They have found a backer for a new T10 franchise competition and there are reports that they are going to host Australia, perhaps on the back of Ireland’s inability to do so. They haven’t had the volume of fixtures as Ireland in previous years, but can you understand people’s frustration when they find a backer for a franchise league whereas we haven’t been able to get that over the line with the Euro Slam, and they potentially take advantage of our lack of infrastructure to host Australia?”
WD: “I don’t know what has been announced from Cricket Scotland, if it has been definitively announced that they’re playing Australia, has it?”
Q: “No. It hasn’t been announced, there is speculation.”
WD: “Until it’s announced, it might be better for me to speculate on the particular comparison. Let’s say there are going to be one, two or three games announced. I refer to my previous response which says between our home and away fixtures this year, between our men’s and women’s senior international programme alone, we’re likely to play 50+ international fixtures. We’re in the men’s FTP, we’re in the Women’s Championship, we support a 50-match interprovincial and domestic professional Super Series structure. We have an emerging competition in the interpros. We play a lot of junior international cricket having participated in the U19 men’s World Cup this year.
“If you aggregate all the system and structures which we support, I think it goes a lot deeper than simply one or two men’s international fixtures, that is the key consideration. It’s about looking at the support CI provides to the Irish cricket ecosystem as being significantly deeper than one or two men’s matches.”
Q: “Combine the frequent last minute budgetary changes, the late nature of fixture announcements, the lack of clarity on domestic fixtures, the lack of announcement on player contracts, you have provided context but, externally, there is a picture of chaos within the organisation. Has that damaged the CI brand, and if so, do you have confidence in your ability to restore confidence in CI?”
WD: “I suppose the damage, if it is there, it’s not something that we’re necessarily hearing from our stakeholders. Communication is a very important consideration here. The vast majority of people with whom we engage, be it our internal committees, external stakeholders such as players, the Irish Cricketers’ Association, our match officials association, governments north and south, the ICC, and our commercial partners, our broadcasters, we do an awful lot of work to make sure we’re not just hitting these people last minute with information. We ensure that they are informed as far as possible on the key areas, the key decisions we need to make to try and bring as much certainty as possible.
“If things change, we also try and communicate as quickly as possible with them to say, this has come up, this has changed, this is now what we’re trying to do about it and these are the timelines to do this as quickly as possible, to bring certainty to us and you. Do we like last minute changes? Of course not, particularly when they’re fundamental, but we think the key to this is as much communication internally as possible and what we’re trying to do now is escalate that externally to commensurately communicate with our fans and the media why things aren’t happening as quickly as they like.”
Q: “Can you commit to not postponing, in their entirety, any women’s series this summer?”
WD: “I think it would be wrong for us to say that there wouldn’t be in the mix all considerations around our fixtures. In terms of cancelling series, that is not going to happen.”
Q: “Is there any update you would like to provide on Abbotstown? A lot of people have seen that the Sport Ireland velodrome to be built on the same campus has been delayed by 12 months, put two and two together, and are concerned about cricket’s timeline.”
WD: “There is no doubt whatsoever it is probably my number one priority in the business is facilities, the development of permanent infrastructure, not just in Abbotstown but north of the border as well in Stormont. I would say on a nearly daily basis I’m holding conversations very high in the government level to try and bring certainty to this piece of the jigsaw.
“As it stands, do we have a green light from the government to say here’s the funding? No. But that is something which I am working on on a near daily basis. We have a very robust timeline. The government has spent and Sport Ireland has spent a very significant amount of money on planning, architecture, engineering, anyone who has gone up to the Sports Campus in the National Indoor Arena, there was a scale model of what was planned, I don’t know if you saw it yourself, but it’s very significant. For me it’s quite telling the government would have seen fit to put that into the public domain if it wasn't a clear intention. It’s my job to try and bring that to bear as quickly as possible.
“The timelines for this, we would like to start building in 2025, for that to be finished in 2028 which gives us a couple of years prior to our co-hosting of the T20 World Cup in 2030. That is our objective and we are bending our wills to make that happen.”
Was a reminder that a strong pyramid structure is needef
Full member status came with the golden generation but within 2 years most had retired
Now just getting back to that place, but a large portion of the team are now 30+
So there is a need to have a strong pyramid system of bringing players forward and be confident they can perform rather than hope
Finally Australia, can't see them coming over just to play Ireland
They are next due in Europe for 2027 Ashes
World love to see Ireland agree (and fulfil!) to host a pre Ashes Test
A hell of a lot of words to say that they can't do their job properly.
Everyone knew yonks ago that they weren't getting the full allocation from the ICC except for the board it seems.