New Zealand Cricket revealed a NZ$9.3M ($6.4M) financial loss for the past year as it "trumpets its biggest broadcast rights deal with Star Sports India," according to Mark Geenty of STUFF. NZC CEO David White confirmed the "hefty" deficit in the annual report which will be presented at the AGM next Wednesday. It was "far worse" than last year's NZ$2.16M loss and "significantly more" than the budgeted deficit of NZ$5.7M ($3.9M). White said that NZC faced a "challenging couple of years" but explained the loss was largely due to the Int'l Cricket Council's new financial model. In the eight years through '23, NZC's "slice of ICC funding would increase" from $90M to $128M but it was a case of "less now, more later." White: "That's been a big jump for us but what was agreed was that we get less up front, than was forecast in the old model, and a lot more to the back end of that agreement. That shortfall is primarily the increase but we make up for it significantly in future years." He said that gate takings, which typically make up 10% of NZC's revenue, were down last summer "when the marquee tour by South Africa was hit by the weather." White: "It was a big year in terms of volume of cricket so that was quite expensive. The gates were largely influenced by the weather in a pretty wet summer. Apart from that it was pretty much aligned with budget" (STUFF, 11/8).
