The truth about WIPA's restructuring
Sun, Jul 12, '09
by LAWRENCE ROMEOSince the most recent impasse between WIPA and the WICB resulting in the withdrawal of services by some members of the West indies team, It was revealed by Dinanath Ramnarine that a separate entity WIPMACOL was involved in the players contract negotiations.
During the consequent press conference granted by Ramnarine following the first round of talks over the impasse between the two sides, Ramnarine stated that he was ever ready to provide all documentation to support his position. I contacted Ramnarine to get some clarity on the situation and even though this writer has been a harsh critic of some of Ramnarine's methods in the past and have had many spirited discussions and differences of opinion with Ramnarine regarding the workings of WIPA, I have always found him open and willing to discuss the issues and answer any and all questions.
WIPMACOL (West Indies Player Management Company Limited), along with WIPA Sports, comes under the umbrella of WIPA Holdings which is the umbrella holding company and for-profit arm of WIPA. All companies share the same group of directors -- Dinanath Ramnarine, Wavell Hinds, Jimmy Adams, and Ian Bradshaw.
WIPA Sports will be engaged in the running of tournaments like the WIPA 20/20 club championships which is held annually in Trinidad while WIPMACOL manages the players IP and Image rights.
On various dates between October 2007 and January 2008, several players had signed over their Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) to WIPA. These rights were then reassigned to WIPMACOL with the consent of the players. This information was communicated to Dave Cameron and Donald Peters (then CEO of the WICB) via letter on November 21st 2007 and then again on February 18th 2009.
The WICB was also aware that the IPR would be reassigned to WIPMACOL within a year and that reassignment was also communicated by letter in August (when Derek Jones was the lead attorney) WICB in-house Attorney Alanna Medford went to WIPA’s offices to see the assignments and they were also shown to Deryck Murray.
Other cricketing nations that have a similar structure are England and South Africa. I have seen the correspondence between the two entities and reviewed the discussions between WIPA and the WICB going back as far as 2007; WIPA should be congratulated for their advocacy for their members. Having seen the trail of documentation, I have no doubts about the legitimacy of the companies mentioned in this article.
The root of the impasse has been the seeming inability of the WICB to come to terms with the fact that the IPRs of the players have to be negotiated for. The ownership -- or at least the control -- of intellectual property rights enables sporting organizations to exploit not just the sporting event itself, through the sale of admission tickets and television rights, but also through an array of auxiliary products, including sponsorships, endorsements, licensing and merchandising agreements. IPR is a valid commodity in the big business sporting world today, and the players, through WIPMACOL are perfectly within their rights to want to benefit from them.
Players who represent the West Indies in this modern era are operating in a global environment where image rights of sportsmen have been a commercial reality since the 1970s. Faced with this reality, it is up to the WICB to recognize this and ensure that when sitting down at the negotiating table that this is just another right to be negotiated for, just as they have to negotiate for any other right owned by the players. WICB must also realize that they cannot sell what they do not own and it seems that WICB has found this concept hard to grasp.
WICB has indicated in recent press statements that it has been unable to meet certain obligations to its major sponsors but has never detailed exactly what those obligations are. Just as WIPA has allowed documents to be examined WICB needs to be far more transparent with regard to its documentation for credible comparison to be made.
Interestingly, the WICB has now been engaging in the usual one-upmanship tactics that make it difficult for negotiations to move forward. The WICB, has taken to arguing its case in the public domain, taking out incendiary full page ads in papers around the region, e-mailing a press release asserting that talks had broken down half an hour after they had started (10 AM) on Thursday July, 9th when in fact the two entities were in talks until 3 PM on that same day, when they had to be ended because David Cameron, the leader of the WICB team had to leave to catch a flight.
Yet, there has been no concrete information pertaining to the core agreements rather than these back and forth charges.
The WICB will be meeting this weekend during the first test at Arnos Vale in St. Vincent to strategize on the way forward, and judging by the tone of the board president, Julian Hunte, it seems that the board is planning for a battle of proportions of The Battle of the Bulge, rather than the best way to negotiate with the players and more open governance of cricket in the region.
