SPRINGER HAILS RECENT TOURNAMENT

The recently concluded Sir Garfield Sobers International Under-19 tournament was a tremendous success says manager of Sports Tourism with the Barbados Tourism Marketing Inc (BTMI) Kamal Springer.  

Eighteen teams took part in the tournament; including six overseas teams. Guyana was represented by three teams, the other teams were from Trinidad, New York and Australia. 

 New York Tri-State Youth Development cricket team avenged last year’s loss in the final when they defeated the defending champions Hills Academy of Australia by six wickets to capture the title at Kensington Oval. 

“The tournament was tremendous; it was great to rebuild it after Covid, because it was not played for a couple years during the pandemic an only restarted last year, and the teams were anxious to get going. This year were able to attract six overseas teams, the families of some of the cricketers came as well. All told, we had around 120 visitors for over two weeks which was fantastic. This is something that only sports can do, there are not many events held on the island that can get visitors to stay beyond one week. Therefore; having cricket or any kind of sporting activity which create that level of visitation – the economic impact is quite incredible, we saw it during the tournament. The families went to the beach; they visited Oistins, and patronised restaurants, and bars. The money spend while they were on the island, and the funding for the tournament adds to the economic impact along with the spendings in the hotels for food and beverages”, Springer told Advo Magazine. 

Springer said the BTMI hoping to attract 10 overseas teams to the tournament in 2026; and increase the number of visitors coming to the island for the competition, and they are currently deploying efforts to make it work. He disclosed that the BTMI are planning to attract more schools and clubs from the region to the tournament.  

“It is a balance because of the competitive nature of these tournaments around the world. I think there is one in Antigua and a couple other places as well, and schools, clubs and academies in the United Kingdom have the option of going to Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. It is very completive market, because people have seen the value of what we have been doing for 34 years. More people have become aware of the value of having these cricket tournaments where young cricketers are exposed to international conditions – so we are aiming to build the Caribbean visitation”, Springer said. 

He explained: that there four markets that the BTMI are planning to target heavily: “There is a major opportunity in the United States with the creation of Major League Cricket-they are bound to establish academies to develop their young cricketers. So, we are going to target the Americans; there is also an emerging market in Canada, and we are going to make an all-out effort in the United Kingdom, which was our strongest market for several decades, but has declined over the years. Latin America is also playing a bit of cricket at the school level, so looking into that region as a very speculative market, there are a lot of opptunities for us to increase the number of overseas teams to 10 in 2026”. 

Springer said It was quite challenging to rebuild the tournament after the pandemic because the overseas bookings for competition are done the year before. 

 “These teams tend to book a year in advance; they don’t wait until summer is coming to book their trips. They fundraising and planning coordination are done the year before, when we ready to resume the tournament after the two-year hiatus because of Covid, a lot of the teams had already booked for tournaments. We recognised that they needed almost a two-year notification in advance. We communicated with the Australian and New York teams that played in this year’s tournament two years ago, this were the second year they played in the competition. We have also done a similar thing with the British teams so that they can come in 2026. We are now targeting teams for the tournament in 2027. We are expecting 10 teams next year, and around 15 teams in 2027. Our intention is to have 25 teams participating in the tournament by 2030”, Springer said.     

According to Springer, Barbados’ rich cricket legacy and history and the possibility of playing matches at Kensington Oval plays an important role in attracting teams to play in the tournament. 

  “Last year the final was played at the Three Ws Oval, but this year, we decided to play it at Kensington, and all of the teams were excited about the prospect of playing there. Three International Cricket Council (ICC) World Cup finals were playing there. I don’t think no cricket ground with the exception of Lord’s have that privilege. The players had the opportunity some of the cricket legions of Barbados including Sir Charles Griffith and Joel Garner. They were exciting to learn about how these guys operated back in the day and dominated world cricket”, Springer said. 

“The fact that so many of our cricketers were members of teams that won World Cups; and the facilities at Kensington are worldclass have been a major attraction. They can come here and play at a worldclass facility and world class coaching; we even had a masterclass for them to help them go through their training with the cricket legends and former West Indies players; therefore, I think that our cricket heritage has been a significant pull in attracting overseas teams to the tournament”, he added. 

The sports tourism executive said the BTMI has annual calendar is full of sporting events that are attracting visitors to the island. 

 “The calendar for Barbados sports tourism is about 35 to 40 events. We have quite a lot going on that target various markets throughout the world. Sports tourism is quite important because it is a tool that can be used any time of the year for all demographics, all age groups, all religions it can span any part of the world. The only thing that is ubiquitous as sports is probably music, so we have an opportunity to grow it tremendously. Last year, we had about 12,000 visitors specifically for sports, and those were the ones that we were able to track. There are many people that visited the island for the Sir Garfield Sobers tournament who probably did not click on their immigration form that they were visiting the island for cricket. These visitors would click that they were here for holiday, so some of that data is not being capture as well. I have no doubt that we had captured all of the data, the number would have been way beyond 12,000. We are well on track to higher numbers, because people want to come for an adventurous activity not just the sand and the beach anymore”, Springer explained. 

 While Springer could not give a demographic breakdown of the visitors who visited the island for sporting events, he said that the United Kingdom still dominates the market.  

‘The United Kingdom is still our main market, but visitors from the United States have increased exponentially, and the USA has become a very large market for us, Canada is third.  Latin America is growing much quicker than anticipated, we also have people coming from Europe and the emerging market like the Gulf States, and Dubia”, Springer said. (PR/GIS)