West Indies Cricket Board (WICB) chief executive officer, Bruce Aanensen (left), looks on as Kevin White, chief operating officer of Digicel Group Caribbean, sign the renewed partnership agreement between the WICB and Digicel which extends the arrangement until September 2012. The signing took place in Port-of-Spain, Trinidad, yesterday. - Contributed

PORT-OF-SPAIN, Trinidad

(CMC):

The West Indies Cricket Board and mobile provider Digicel announced yesterday that it has extended their sponsorship agreement until September 2012.

Bruce Aanensen, chief executive officer of the WICB, indicated that the revised agreement comes into effect on October 1 this year, following discussion about some of the terms of the agreement which he described as 'irritants'.

"It is not a new contract, but it is more of an extension of the existing contract with some fairly significant amendments," he told reporters at a news conference yesterday at Queen's Park Oval. "The contract was to end in January 2010 and, as part of our negotiations with Digicel, it was agreed that they would relieve us of some of the onerous things the WICB could not deliver upon.

"In turn, they asked for an extension of the agreement which we found to be a quite reasonable request on the part of Digicel, giving all that we had asked for"

Annual payments

The agreement guarantees yearly sponsorship payments of at least US$4 million from which there will be no deductions, something that proved to be a contentious issue under the previous arrangement.

"Under the old contract, there were someclauses with which he had some difficulty with the interpretations and these have been sorted out," Aanensen said.

The new contract, which comes into effect ahead of the West Indies' tour of South Africa later this year, offers enhanced opportunities for the WICB to attract more corporate sponsorship. These include branding rights at Test match grounds and sponsorship rights to any three-nation series the WICB might develop.

"One of the big costs to the WICB in this contract in the past has been a 10 per cent fee due to an intermediary who brought the two parties together," Aanensen said. "Digicel has agreed that instead of the WICB taking up this expense, they would also take responsibility for this."

Scaled back

He added: "Digicel have scaled back on some of the branding opportunities they have had in the original contract and this would allow us the chance to do some branding of our own or to sell some branding to some of the sponsors of our other tournaments.

"In the tri-nations tournaments that we have, and any tournament run by the ICC, if Digicel brought the sponsor to the table, they got a percentage of the sponsorship money.

"If WICB brought the sponsor, WICB got 60 per cent and Digicel got 40 per cent, but they are now saying if we are having a problem finding a sponsor, they can assist. They have, however, said we must go ahead and get a sponsor and they do not want anything out of it, so that has given us an opportunity to earn additional income."

Digicel will also continue its own programme of development initiatives such as its cricket scholarship programme and training clinics and it has expressed its willingness to be part of the proposed academy for West Indies cricket to be launched in November at the Cave Hill campus at the University of the West Indies.

During the recently concluded Windies tour of England, Digicel funded a specialist fielding coach and team psychologist, as well as announced the scholarship programme which allowed the first recipient Jerome Taylor the opportunity to play with Leicester-shire for the remainder of the English County Championship season.