With just two days remaining before the commencement of the new season of the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB), on Wednesday, unveiled Ispahani, one of the country's largest tea producers, as the title sponsor for BPL 2024.
The announcement of the title sponsor was overshadowed by numerous questions that the BCB could not address properly.
A representative from a sponsor mentioned that the negativity surrounding BPL in the previous season was 'part and parcel' of the game. Tanvir Ahmed, the chairman of the BCB media department, echoed this sentiment in the same manner.
When questioned about whether the BCB welcomes controversy in the BPL, Tanvir clarified that they did not intend that, mentioning the collective effort is required to make the BPL a success.
He vaguely said the BCB will do everything needed to improve the brand of BPL.
BPL once was an attractive event to the cricket-mad fans of Bangladesh. But in recent years, the public's interest in BPL has receded notably. Tanvir resorted to the quality of the competition in the field while replying to a question about it.
With this season, the BPL is completing ten seasons. Surprisingly, none of the teams who are going to participate in this season were part of the first season of BPL in 2012.
A total of seven teams will compete in this year’s BPL, and one of those teams is Durdanto Dhaka, yet another new team in the competition.
With Durdanto Dhaka, the total number of teams that played in at least one edition of BPL reached 28, indicating that the teams tend to lose their interest in playing in BPL— the only T20 event in the country with a permanent place in BCB’s yearly calendar.
Some franchises have asked the BCB to share the revenue of BPL with them, which was in demand in the past, too. But the BCB is still ignoring it.
“We want to run BPL based on a sustainable structure— both for BCB and franchises,” Nizam Uddin Chowdhury, the chief executive officer of BCB, said. He confirmed that BCB will not share revenue with the franchises, saying that the financial model BCB currently has is incompatible with the demand for sharing revenue.
