Dubai, Feb. 11 : The second annual two-day ICC Broadcaster and Sponsor Forum was held in Dubai this week.

The forum brought together all ICC's major commercial partners - ESPN STAR Sports, Reliance Mobile, LG Electronics, Pepsico, Yahoo!, Emirates Airline and Reebok - as well as the ICC's main suppliers and service providers.

The theme of the forum was partnerships and ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat told the meeting that it was incumbent on the ICC to forge successful partnerships with the commercial sector.

"Financially, we depend on our commercial partners. That is no secret," said Mr Lorgat. "We need to optimise our revenues from our events and other properties in order to develop the game around the world and ensure the future well-being of cricket.

"We feel we offer good value for the product that we have on offer. Cricket is arguably the world's second most popular team sport after soccer and it can certainly boast one of the most passionate and loyal fan-bases.

"Cricket is unique in that it now has three viable formats of the game regularly being played at international level, each with its own style, support base and history. This provides great variation for players, spectators, sponsors and broadcasters to find their niche.

"However, we can never hope to optimise the revenues from this great game without a healthy partnership with the business and broadcast sectors.

"As with all good relationships, there will be ups and downs but whatever problem is put before us, whatever challenge we face, we will work hard to make sure the relationship works because it means too much to the future health and well-being of the game. Failure is not an option," he added.

The forum heard presentations from SuperSport's chief executive Imtiaz Patel, assistant vice-president, syndication of ESPN STAR Sports Tom Harrison, Sanjay Behl, head of brand and marketing at Reliance Communications, Nitin Mathur, director - marketing, Yahoo! and Depender Redhu of LG Electronics among others.

Harrison said: "This forum was a very useful event as it enables ICC's principle investors to air ideas and concerns with respect to ICC events." (ANI)