ANTIGUA | Pringle Unveils Landmark Sports & Entertainment Complex, Promises to Build What Browne Could Not

UPP Political Leader Jamale Pringle announces the Sir Vivian Richards Sports & Entertainment Complex — a multi-venue facility at North Sound — positioning the party as the vehicle for a sports tourism revolution in Antigua and Barbuda.

ST JOHNS, Antigua and Barbuda - April 23, 2026 - United Progressive Party Political Leader Jamale Pringle unveiled his party’s most ambitious campaign pledge Wednesday night, announcing plans to build the Sir Vivian Richards Sports & Entertainment Complex at North Sound — a landmark facility he says will transform Antigua and Barbuda into the Caribbean’s premier hub for sports tourism and youth development.

Addressing a charged rally in Potters, St. George — one week before the April 30 general election — Pringle cast the announcement as more than a construction project.

He framed it as a generational investment in young Antiguans and Barbudans navigating a world where artificial intelligence is eroding the traditional employment landscape that once absorbed school leavers.

“School-leavers are looking for different opportunities — more varied careers, including in entertainment and in sports,” Pringle told the gathering. “What our young people need now — at a time when Artificial Intelligence is consuming many traditional jobs — are the facilities and the opportunities.

If they are afforded both, they can not only make their name in these arenas, but they can make Antigua and Barbuda’s name as well.”

“Right there, where the cricket stadium sits, I can remember when it was nothing but pasture. A place where you found donkeys grazing in the day. The UPP turned a paddock into a stadium. We did it before and we will do it again.”— Jamale Pringle, UPP Political Leader

A Complex Built for the Next Generation

The proposed complex, to be sited along the Sir Sidney Walling Highway at North Sound, would be the most comprehensive sporting and entertainment infrastructure project in Antigua and Barbuda’s history.

As envisioned, it will feature a football stadium seating 8,000 fans; a multi-purpose arena accommodating volleyball, netball, and basketball with capacity for 5,000 patrons; tennis courts; a full track-and-field facility for both training and competition; and all requisite support infrastructure, including changing rooms, therapy spaces, and spectator amenities.

Critically, the complex will also house an aquatic centre — a facility Pringle pointedly noted was promised to competitive swimmers by the sitting Minister of Sports approximately four years ago and never delivered. “He has ridden the wave of success but has failed to build what he promised our gifted young people,” the UPP leader said. “What he failed to do, Brother Shugy will ensure it gets done.”

Beyond athletics, the facility is conceived as an entertainment destination — a permanent stage for the nation’s musicians, dancers, poets, and performers.

Pringle invoked a roll call of national entertainment icons — Fab 4, Tian Winters, Claudette Peters, the Menaces, Lacu Samuels, Hellsgates — as the kind of talent that deserves professional infrastructure, not makeshift stages. “The musical talents will find a home at the Sir Vivian Richards Sports & Entertainment Complex,” he declared.

From Pasture to Playing Field — A Track Record That Talks

Pringle was careful not to let the announcement float on aspiration alone. He anchored the pledge squarely in UPP’s demonstrable record of infrastructure delivery, pointing to the very ground on which the crowd was listening.

It was the UPP, he reminded them, that secured a grant from the People’s Republic of China and transformed a grazing paddock at North Sound into the Sir Vivian Richards Cricket Ground — one of the region’s premier venues and a permanent monument to what political will and strategic partnership can achieve.

“We did it before and we will do it again,” he told the crowd. “We will make Antigua and Barbuda into the centre of Caribbean Sports Tourism, hosting regional meets and competitions — a place where talent scouts can see our young people perform and identify them for bigger things.”

The sporting analogy was pointed and deliberate: four young women from Antigua and Barbuda rowed across the Atlantic; a fast bowler from Urlings became the first Antiguan to play Test cricket; others followed him to international stardom. The message was clear — this nation has never lacked talent. It has lacked the infrastructure to incubate and showcase that talent at home.

The Stakes: Talent Drain and the Cost of Doing Nothing

Implicit in Wednesday night’s announcement is an indictment of thirteen years of ABLP governance. For more than a decade, Antigua and Barbuda’s most gifted young athletes and artists have left — many compelled to represent other countries simply because the facilities to sustain their careers at home did not exist.

That exodus has real costs: in national pride, in economic potential from sports tourism, and in the signal it sends to a rising generation about whether their country values their ambitions.

Prime Minister Gaston Browne’s administration has no comparable announcement to make. A broken promise to competitive swimmers is the legacy on sports infrastructure. The Browne government’s record on youth facilities stands in sharp relief against the scale of what Pringle is now offering.

As election day approaches on April 30, the Sir Vivian Richards Sports & Entertainment Complex is now the defining image of what a UPP government would build — literally and symbolically. Pringle’s challenge to doubters was equally clear: “This dream of ours is going to choke the doubters.

Out of sheer jealousy, they will say Antigua is too small for all that. But we have the political will, we think big, and we have the reputation that will give other countries and international associations the confidence to invest in the dream with us.”

The pasture became a cricket ground. Next Thursday, Antiguans and Barbudans will decide whether the paddock of unfulfilled promise becomes a complex that finally gives their young people the arena and the stage they deserve.

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