The 2026 cam­paign of the Trin­ba­go Knight Rid­ers (TKR) in the Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) has been dis­ap­point­ing.

How­ev­er, the same can be said about re­turns for sev­er­al busi­ness­es near the home ground of the CPL’s most suc­cess­ful team, which ac­com­mo­dat­ed five match­es.

On Wednes­day morn­ing, hours be­fore TKR record­ed an­oth­er de­feat at the hands of the An­tigua and Bar­bu­da Fal­cons at the St Clair venue, sev­er­al restau­rant ex­plained that traf­fic re­stric­tions and ag­gres­sive wreck­ing con­tributed to low­er sales and foot traf­fic.

“Well, re­al­ly, we had a de­crease in sales when the traf­fic from the street,” said Pa­traj roti shop cashier Natasha Sama­roo, who added that the shop was al­so not a high con­sid­er­a­tion for pa­trons of the game due to food pur­chased out­side the venue be­ing pro­hib­it­ed.

“Re­mem­ber, these spec­ta­tors can­not buy stuff and go in­to the Oval with it. So, our sales de­creased with the traf­fic reg­u­la­tions, where the wreck­ing is con­cerned, and then well, we didn’t have a flow of cus­tomers from the spec­ta­tors com­ing for the games on the evening be­cause re­mem­ber you can’t go in the Oval with the stuff. So they weren’t re­al­ly com­ing to buy any­thing here. But the wreck­ing it needs to be sort­ed out be­cause the sales is drop­ping dras­ti­cal­ly,” she said.

How­ev­er, she said even reg­u­lar cus­tomers were dis­suad­ed, as she ex­plained that last week a cus­tomer who parked to buy a roti left the es­tab­lish­ment to see the wreck­er leav­ing with their car.

“So you come to buy a roti for $40 and then have to pay $500 to get your car back,” she ex­plained.

Sama­roo said the shop had placed signs up to warn cus­tomers about the wreck­er as a re­sult, but ths chang­ing rules dai­ly al­so made that dif­fi­cult.

At Rolling Smoke, a burg­er joint at the cor­ner of Al­fre­do Street and Tra­garete Road, the cashier told Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian that “things are al­ways dead for CPL”

The own­er of 12byR­ishi­Ra­men sim­i­lar­ly ex­plained that traf­fic re­stric­tions neg­a­tive­ly im­pact­ed reg­u­lar cus­tomer sales at his restau­rant. He said park­ing con­cerns were height­ened as a re­sult of the traf­fic re­stric­tions and wreck­ing in the area.

How­ev­er, he ex­plained that the restau­rant did see some re­turns as a re­sult of cater­ing jobs done for booths at the Oval dur­ing the CPL.

Many busi­ness­es near to the Oval al­so point out that most, if not all, of the games start­ed af­ter they would have closed.

Even the on­ly “ear­ly” game sched­uled at the Oval, the In­de­pen­dence Day game be­tween TKR and Guyana Ama­zon War­riors, fin­ished short­ly af­ter 10 pm de­spite the first ball be­ing bowled at 5 pm. Rain forced not just a re­duc­tion of overs in that con­test, but al­so de­layed the time pa­trons spent in the venue.

A co­conut ven­dor at Lo­co Co­co said this re­al­i­ty meant he saw very lit­tle sales from CPL pa­trons with the ex­cep­tion of the In­de­pen­dence Day match.

“The night games, not so much (sales), but dur­ing the one-day game they had, it was very, very help­ful dur­ing the day game,” said the ven­dor, who said it was a sig­nif­i­cant drop-off com­pared to pre­vi­ous years when games were host­ed at the venue. The Oval did not host any CPL games in 2025, but the ven­dor point­ed out pre­vi­ous edi­tions fea­tured more day­time match­es.

“I can re­mem­ber those times. Back then we had more of the games as well. We had more day games as well in those days. So just based on that fact, I think it would be a telling fac­tor as to why the sales didn’t im­prove that much dur­ing the CPL. I’m not here late at night. I’m here un­til like sev­en,” said the ven­dor, who ex­plained that his busi­ness, which is op­er­at­ed out of a truck parked along Tra­garete Road, was al­so af­fect­ed by the traf­fic re­stric­tions.

He ad­mit­ted the wreck­ing sit­u­a­tion meant the truck would con­sis­tent­ly have to move as a re­sult, but he ac­cept­ed that the re­stric­tions were re­quired for such an event.

“I mean, you need the flow of traf­fic, so the re­stric­tions are un­der­stood. You need the flow. Oth­er­wise, it’s chaos here,” said the ven­dor.

The own­er of Full Bloom Cof­fee Roast­er, which is just off the cor­ner of Eliz­a­beth Street and Sweet Bri­ar Road, made it clear he didn’t dis­like the CPL, but con­firmed that the event al­ways brings chal­lenges to his busi­ness. While the cof­fee shop al­so closed be­fore most of the games start­ed, he ex­plained that the traf­fic re­stric­tions al­so cre­at­ed a headache for his busi­ness.

He said scalpers would oc­cu­py space near the shop while al­so hus­tling pa­trons to pay them to park in the shop’s car park, cre­at­ing an­oth­er lo­gis­ti­cal is­sue for the busi­ness, which had to de­ploy its se­cu­ri­ty team to quell that sit­u­a­tion.

When the Busi­ness Guardian passed by the busi­ness on Wednes­day at 11 am, scalpers were out­side the shop try­ing to sell tick­ets for game that night

Even All Out Bar, which is op­er­at­ed by for­mer Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Gary Grif­fith and lo­cat­ed on the first floor of Queen’s Park Oval’s pavil­ion build­ing, did not see it as vi­able to op­er­ate for most of the Trinidad leg of the CPL.

Grif­fith con­firmed the bar on­ly opened for the In­de­pen­dence Day game.

But it wasn’t all bad for neigh­bour­ing busi­ness­es. Food ven­dors at 139 Wood­brook Yard large­ly re­port­ed in­creased foot traf­fic at the open-air foot hub both be­fore and af­ter match­es.

“The pa­trons com­ing in be­fore and even af­ter the crick­et would come and pur­chase our sand­wich­es and stuff. So sales have been in­creas­ing due to the CPL lo­cat­ed right next door,” said a sales rep at Quan Kep’s Pork Shed at Wood­brook Yard.

She con­tin­ued, “Dur­ing the week, like how to­day is a game. For a Wednes­day, we ac­tu­al­ly will def­i­nite­ly show an in­crease in sales be­cause dur­ing the week tends to be a bit slow­er, But a lot of them will be com­ing to the game now, so they will be com­ing here more fre­quent­ly, in larg­er quan­ti­ties.”

She added that it al­so at­tract­ed new­er cus­tomers who may not reg­u­lar­ly come to Port-of-Spain and who nev­er got a chance to try the brand.

An­oth­er pop­u­lar Wood­brook Yard spot, Jerk Boyz, has seen a sim­i­lar pos­i­tive push.

Jerk Boys adapt­ed its op­er­a­tional sched­ule, re­main­ing open un­til mid­night to cap­ture the post-game rush.

“Every time you have CPL match­es, it al­ways has a great turnover,” a Jerk Boys work­er shared. He ex­plained the busi­ness had seen a sub­stan­tial im­pact this year, which was a wel­come con­trast to the pre­vi­ous year when the Oval did not host match­es. To cope with this de­mand, the es­tab­lish­ment has scaled up its op­er­a­tions, step­ping up dai­ly prep work and sig­nif­i­cant­ly in­creas­ing the vol­ume of chick­en pre­pared for each match day.

How­ev­er, even then the per­for­mance of TKR al­so lim­it­ed the po­ten­tial sales that could have been achieved. On Wednes­day night, pa­trons did go to Wood­brook Yard to buy food af­ter the match, but many dis­ap­point­ed pa­trons sim­ply opt­ed to head home in­stead of lin­ger­ing to cel­e­brate as they would in pre­vi­ous CPL cam­paigns.

The wreck­ing sit­u­a­tion al­so wor­ried pa­trons, as some left the venue on­ly to dis­cov­er their ve­hi­cles had been wrecked.

Most busi­ness­es around the Oval have ac­cept­ed this is par for the course when events are held at the venue.

But there is a call by some a call for more uni­fied ur­ban event plan­ning, such as ded­i­cat­ed park and ride sys­tems and park­ing lot pro­tec­tion, to en­sure that the po­ten­tial eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits of re­gion­al sports tourism are bet­ter re­alised.