Kensington Oval still isn’t turning a profit, even if it seems ready to turn the corner.
The mecca of Caribbean cricket could be finally charting a path out of the woods after Kensington Oval Management Inc. (KOMI) managed to reduce the facility’s operation costs while increasing the events it hosts over the last year.
KOMI chief executive officer Henry Inniss revealed the Oval’s slight turnaround in a telephone interview with WEEKEND SPORT following the recent uptick in sporting events being hosted at Kensington.
“We had some of the Banks Hockey Festival a bit earlier this year. We had sections of Kensington being used almost every Friday and Saturday during Crop Over. We had a couple business seminars and birthday parties, so Kensington has become a quite a household name,” said Inniss of the rise in events.
“We want to have an event every day, but we are not quite there yet because Kensington is not making a profit at this time, and although we have brought down our costs, they are still high as we have an electricity bill that is over $70 000 a month.
“But we are a young organization that is still looking to build up its revenue and that will take time before we can cover our costs and turn a profit. We are not quite there but we will get there eventually,” he added.
It’s the encouraging turn of events for a historic cricket venue that is still at the centre of debate after Government spent $135 million to renovate the Oval for the 2007 ICC World Cup.
At the time it was felt that Kensington would become a “white elephant” following the final as it would not be able to attract much revenue to sustain its operations.
And that perception seemed validated up to a year ago, with KOMI disclosing a utility bill in the region of $1 million annually before it was reported that the organization was recording huge losses.
However, KOMI has since identified a commercial strategy in which the naming rights to the stadium will be sold to a huge corporation for a substantial amount of money, along with advertising space within the Oval to other small entities.
“We’ve been looking at selling the naming rights for the last two years and we’ve encountered a few hiccups but we’re still interested in a partner because that would be a huge plus once we get that done,” Inniss reasoned.
“In terms of advertising within the stadium, we have an agreement with the WICB that when they come to town they get a clean stadium, but we are free to advertise all around the stadium once they are not there and that is what we’re looking to do.
“But I also recently visited Lord’s and they have about 550 events in a year, so we have to have our staff in place to handle the volume of events. But they bring in special staff to deal with the events as required, so we have to start doing the same . . . to manage the events quite effectively,” he added.
Kensington Oval is currently playing host to the LIME Pelican Challenge Football tournament on Sundays and has recently hosted the Barbados leg of the Caribbean Football Union’s Cup.
