A consultative meeting between Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and franchise owners will be held today to mull various options about who should pay the additional expenses to the interim Punjab government, reported 24NewsHD TV channel.

Sources have said that if the deadlock between PCB and the provincial government persisted the remaining PSL8 matches will be shifted to Karachi.

The financial dispute between PCB and Punjab government has rocked PSL cricket and the PSL 2023 may be entirely relocated to Karachi. 

Following a meeting with all franchise owners that will be facilitated in the afternoon, a decision will be reached. In the meeting various options will be discussed for who should pay the additional expenses to the Punjab government, how to do so, and whether it would be possible to move the final 20 matches from Punjab to Sindh while still maintaining the current schedule.

The financial disagreement is over how to divide the security costs of hosting the tournament, with the PCB reportedly being asked to pay Rs450 million to host the tournament in Lahore and Rawalpindi by the Punjab government. The government’s expenses for holding the matches in Multan are also included in this sum.

The PCB, on the other hand, had a deal to pay only Rs50 million to the former administration, which was overthrown in the final week of January, and the board has honoured that payment.

A PCB official claims that the Sindh government just demands payment for catering to the security personnel and does not demand that the PCB contribute to the expenditures associated with security. Its expense is estimated to be around Rs30 million.

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According to reports, the PCB is also willing to contribute to the cost of catering in Punjab, but they are hesitant to pay for security because they believe the provincial government should be in charge of that.

A PCB official argued that the financial burden of the security charges would be too great given that the government has previously covered the security costs for staging cricket in the province.

There is a general understanding that the franchise owners would also be expected to contribute financially if the PCB were obliged to pay that amount. In that case, moving the entire tournament to Karachi would be less expensive for the parties involved.

Reporter Hafiz Shahbaz