In an office block in Mayfair’s Berkeley Square, English cricket changed forever on Friday. It was at the marbled London headquarters of American investment bankers the Raine Group that some of the world’s richest businessmen fought fiercely for stakes in the Hundred and money rained down on the English game.
Counties can now expect an immediate windfall of around £11 million each and grass-roots cricket an injection of £40m after 49 per cent stakes in four of the eight teams – London Spirit (Lord’s), the Oval Invincibles, Welsh Fire and Birmingham Phoenix – were sold for £280m. It shows the allure of English cricket’s heritage. To be associated with Lord’s, the Oval and Edgbaston means something and should boost the game’s self-confidence.
Officials of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) cannot believe the sums of money. Earlier this week they were nervously briefing to lower expectations. Now they can celebrate a bulging pot of gold that will protect county cricket for decades, if spent wisely.
Staggered ECB executives could not believe what they were witnessing as a bidding war for the Lord’s-based London Spirit broke out between the winning consortium of Silicon Valley moguls and the owners of the Indian Premier League Lucknow franchise. From a starting bid of £60m for the 49 per cent stake on offer, the Spirit were eventually sold for £145m after three hours of intense auctioneering with the price rocketing by £3m every 15 minutes.
After the Ambani family bought the Oval Invincibles on Thursday, American football legend and investor Tom Brady added Birmingham to his portfolio and the chief executives of Google, Adobe and Microsoft teamed up to buy London Spirit. English cricket can now tap into world-leading business expertise and innovation as it looks to expand the game to new audiences who consume content differently.
English cricket is a small village, rarely does it open its doors to new money, new ideas and new people. ECB chairmen usually serve their apprenticeships in the shires. Now the game has a different dynamic that is exciting, but there will be inevitable pinch points and clashes of interest that need to be managed correctly. Counties will have to accept new partners and the ECB deal with rich, powerful men used to having their own way. It will take strong leadership and good will from both sides.
English cricket owes a huge debt of gratitude to Colin Graves, Tom Harrison and Sanjay Patel. Graves was the ECB chairman who bullied and cajoled the counties into accepting a new competition. Patel was the marketing man who came up with the format and Harrison the chief executive who made it happen. All copped flak, sometimes brutally personal, for trying to change English cricket.
They did not always help themselves but from nothing they created an asset for English cricket to sell and protect itself from relying solely on the international game for income. Bilateral series outside those between the big three will not finance the English game for much longer. A new tournament was needed and sadly for the traditionalists, young people, the broadcasters and sponsors were put off by county brands seen as old, traditional and stuffy.
The Hundred concept was invented to delineate the new competition from the Twenty20 Blast and, ironically, satisfy the two men who run the game now.
Richard Thompson and Richard Gould were fierce opponents of a new competition because they felt it would emasculate the counties and harm Surrey, the club they were elected or paid to run. But once they moved from opposition benches to actually running the show at the ECB, they shifted and realised it would be their job to take the Graves-Harrison-Patel vision forward and bring in some actual money.
The game got lucky. It needed Graves’s Yorkshire bluntness to force through change. But it was the more diplomatic skills of Richards that brought everyone together behind a strategy for selling it off because, in the end, the Hundred was always all about money. It could not be squandered.
On his second day as chair in 2022, Thompson was offered around £400m by private equity firm, Bridgepoint, to buy 75 per cent of the whole competition off the ECB and take options on each team.
Thompson was under pressure from the counties to cash in but did not want to cede control of the prime weeks of the summer to an outside agency. Instead the two Richards set about finding a compromise, taking people with them rather than arm twisting.
By splitting the equity 49 per cent to the board, 51 to the host club and splitting the money across the board it reached an agreement acceptable to a group of counties who rarely agree on anything.
They had opposition. Not that long ago, Lalit Modi, founder of the IPL, called the ECB’s sale a ‘Ponzi scheme’ but his fellow Indian investors have rushed in to buy.
As one senior ECB executive said: “This will have a profound impact on the fabric of the game.” Counties can pay off debt, and apply to invest in capital-expenditure projects that have a real business benefit. Clubs like Kent and Worcestershire can seriously consider whether they should move away from grounds built in the Victorian era and lacking in the modern world.
There is no reason why a serious state school cricket project cannot be funded by the ECB, the grass-roots clubs and leagues receive a shot of investment to improve community facilities and the women’s game.
The powerful, connected new owners can lure the best players to light up the Hundred and grow the tournament into the second best franchise league in the world behind the IPL.
Doing so will help them receive a return on their investment. It is hard to see at this stage how that will happen. Broadcast rights are not going up because pay television companies are strapped for cash. You cannot expand the grounds to pack in more fans and the owners only lease the stadiums for four home games. But they are betting that the Hundred will expand as international bilateral cricket reduces and that is an alarm bell for many to worry for the future. There are always pitfalls when new money flows in.
Not that long ago domestic cricket teams were chaired by a well-heeled local businessman who loved the game. For years Derbyshire were run by Don Amott, whose family money came from a caravan park just off the A50 between Derby and Uttoxeter.
Now the chief executives of Microsoft, Google, an iconic American sportsman and Asia’s richest family have stakes in the future of English cricket. A nightingale definitely sang for its supper in Berkeley Square this week.
