The Abu Dhabi T10 is looking to start afresh as it approaches its tenth season this year, hoping that new league and franchise ownerships will help establish a top-flight annual cricket event in the region.
The league was launched in 2017 by the UAE-based businessman Shaji ul Mulk. It was the world's first in the format, but has struggled over the years because of integrity issues.
In September 2023, eight people associated with one of the franchises were charged for corruption breaches by the ICC during an earlier season.
Earlier this month, USA player B Akhilesh Reddy was banned for eight years after he was found guilty of breaching the ICC's anti-corruption code last season.
The league has also been identified in the past for player payment issues.
Constant and often swift changes in franchise ownership have not helped build the identity of a league played by anything between six and ten teams over the years - other than the eight that played last season, as many as 18 teams have taken part over the years.
In part, this track record and the reputational fallout prompted the Abu Dhabi government to take majority ownership of the league earlier this year, through the Abu Dhabi Cricket and Sports Hub. "I do think that a number of challenges occurred in the past where that had an impact on the brand name of Abu Dhabi," the Abu Dhabi Sport Council's CEO Matt Boucher told Cricinfo. "And that was something that we couldn't control because third party team owners were making decisions that had a negative impact on the brand of Abu Dhabi."
The other part of it was for the capital city to have its own premier cricket event. The UAE has hosted top-flight cricket regularly for years now and the ILT20, run by the Emirates Cricket Board in Dubai, is well-established. Abu Dhabi now wants to place cricket into its busy winter sports calendar that includes an F1 race as well as the Abu Dhabi Golf Championship.
Equity conversations with the previous ownership have taken place over the last year, leading to the government acquiring a controlling stake. They are now deep into a bidding process overseen by Deloitte to find new team owners, expecting to receive final bids this week.
"We want regular team owners, we want long-term contracts, so we don't work in a world where we're on one to two-year rotating agreements and then changing everything from year to year," Boucher said. "The strength of any event is based on longer term contracts, and that's something that we're really focussed on now."
Boucher was hoping that the involvement of the Abu Dhabi government would send the signals of institutional stability the league has so far lacked, helping attract a different kind of investor. Though the process is being run independently, Boucher did not deny there had been interest and communication with IPL franchise owners, who own teams in the ILT20 as well as in a growing number of T20 leagues around the world.
"I think it's fair to say that there's been some outreach with owners and investors that we are familiar with from South Asia," he said. "And that gives us a nice moment of recognition that if the world's best teams and the world's best franchise owners are interested in a product in Abu Dhabi, then it makes us confident that we're doing the right thing and we're proceeding along the right steps."
There are no immediate plans to expand the tournament, either beyond eight teams, or in collaboration with neighbours in Dubai, or indeed Saudi Arabia.
"We've definitely got enough on our plates at the moment to enhance the governance and where we want to get to with the event," Boucher said. "We know we've got five or six areas to improve. And if we can nail all of those then that might be something in the future, but certainly not in the next three years."