Ben Gilbert: commitment

Transcript context

…Yes, that is absolutely true. The players are the primary thing, though. The broadcasters will follow the players. Star is desperate to re-broadcast cricket at this point in time. They would’ve loved for the ICL to take off, be able to broadcast that, and go around the BCCI. But it just wasn’t a compelling product. And the BCCI is basically using the mafia tactics of, hey, if you even think about going and playing there, you are banned for life. At that point in time, what really mattered was the chance to play international cricket for India. Lalit, Andrew Wildblood, and IMG are like okay, we got to accelerate this. We were planning to launch what becomes the IPL in 2009. We need to launch now next season April, 2008. I will say, given how rushed this was, it is shocking how well it has all set up. All these dynamics, all the rules and auctions and everything about this league are so well-balanced given they pulled it forward a year. Absolutely. It’s also lucky for them that they do pull this forward in response to the competitive threat from the ICL because there’s another media marketing gift, which is that unexpectedly India ends up winning the first T20 World Cup that summer.…

Stored transcript either side of the excerpt. The highlighted words are the published quote; the surrounding text is unedited source, never generated.