The sale of English cricket’s eight Hundred franchises is now underway, with Yorkshire’s Northern Superchargers having become the first team to sell their entire stake.
Successful bidders The Sun Group, owners of Indian Premier League (IPL) side Sunrisers Hyderabad and South African T20 outfit Sunrisers Eastern Cape, paid around £100 million to acquire 100% of the Superchargers’ stake, with some of the investment providing a material injection of capital to pay off Yorkshire CC’s £20 million debts.
The English Cricket Board (ECB) announced its decision to sell stakes in The Hundred’s eight franchises in May 2024, although it has decided to retain ownership of The Hundred competition itself for the time being.
Each team’s host (including Lord’s, The Oval, Trent Bridge and Old Trafford) has been matched with preferred investors who will now thrash out deals to acquire whole- or part-ownership of the franchise teams. The hosts have been given a 51% stake in their franchise to do with as they will, with the ECB planning to sell the remaining 49% stake to its preferred investor. Should the host opt to sell its stake, a proportion of the revenue will go to English cricket’s 18 county teams.
So far, six teams have announced investment deals, generating hundreds of millions of pounds which are intended to shore up, stabilise and grow the English game, with some of the proceeds redirected to county teams. The logic is that additional investment will enable Hundred teams to attract more of the game’s best players by offering higher salaries, which in turn will boost the competition’s quality and appeal, in turn helping to grow the game.
ECB director of business operations Vikram Banerjee told BBC Sport: “It’s a really exciting moment. It’s an opportunity for us to learn from other sports that have done it, and done it really well. I do think this will help the whole game grow at quite a rate.”
Owners of Premier League football clubs including Manchester United, Chelsea and Nottingham Forest, as well as Indian Premier League (IPL) teams, along with figures from technology and entertainment, are among those who have lined up to be considered for a stake.
The six sales so far come to a total of around £466m. In addition to the sale of 100% of the Superchargers’ stake, the ECB has sold its 49% stake in Surrey’s Oval Invincibles for £60 million, Warwickshire and Glamorgan have both agreed to sell their 51% stakes for £40 million apiece, a £145m price has been agreed for a 49% stake in Lord’s based London Spirit, Lancashire has agreed an £81 million deal for 70% of the Originals, while Nottinghamshire are working on a deal to sell its 49% stake in Trent Rockets.
Hampshire CC, which announced its takeover by the IPL’s Delhi Capitals co-owners in October last year, is also likely to sell 100% of its Hundred franchise at Southampton’s Utilita Bowl to its new owners, the GMR Group.
Since the ECB launched The Hundred format it has proved to be a divisive issue in English cricket, prompting fears that it would crowd out other more traditional forms of the sport, such as the 5 Day Test, particularly during the increasingly congested summer months.
With three of the six sales agreed so far involving IPL owners buying stakes, it also means the English game is now open to the global franchise market. The ECB always intended The Hundred to provide assets that it could control and sell, and despite some criticisms of the process, the sales have been structured to provide much needed revenue to safeguard county finances.
However, the sums involved have been eye-watering, with the ECB initially setting expectations for revenue at around £350 million. The sale of London Spirit’s stake sparked a bidding war that saw the franchise’s valuation double in around three hours, while the six deals agreed so far already value the teams involved at nearly £800 million.
Around half of this revenue will be shared out among clubs in the domestic county game, yielding a huge windfall that will hopefully provide clubs with the breathing room they have been lacking after the twin perils of Covid and high inflation left some clubs fighting for their very existence. Smaller county teams are perhaps the biggest beneficiaries of the sales, as each non-host is also expecting a windfall of about £20m.
It is no secret that English cricket badly needs investment to survive, and the sums involved will be game-changing for some counties. However, the franchises’ new owners are unlikely to see much of a return on their investments in the short term, which means they will be keen to look for ways to grow revenue. Options could include expanding the number of teams in the competition (there is already talk of adding two new franchises by 2026), raising ticket prices, exploring rebranding and naming rights, and, most importantly, securing a lucrative new broadcast deal when the existing agreement with Sky ends.
At present it appears hard to justify the seemingly irrationally large sums being spent, but the buyers must be optimistic that they can unlock the sport’s potential and make The Hundred highly profitable to recoup their investment and generate profits.
A key question will be whether the investment is actually used to fund structural improvements to the game, or whether the cash injection is consumed by paying off debts, shoring up ailing clubs, and attracting some big-name players in the short run before petering out (akin to the fate of football’s Chinese Super League).
English cricket has never boasted such riches before and the new capital and resources could turn the Hundred into a truly world-class tournament, while also protecting county and grassroots cricket by giving clubs the chance to think beyond their short-term survival.
However, whether this is indeed English cricket’s ‘IPL moment’ as some have called it, or whether the hype-bubble will burst, remains to be seen. The 2025 season begins with London Spirit hosting Oval Invincibles in the London derby at Lord’s on 5 August. The new owners will be hoping they can smash it for six, though there is always the risk they could be out for a duck if the viewing public fail to get behind the changes that are likely coming.
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David Little is a Partner at Bishop & Sewell in our expert Sports Law and Corporate & Commercial teams. If you would like to contact him, please call on either 07968 027343 or 020 7631 4141 or email: company@bishopandsewell.co.uk.
The above is accurate as at 10 February 2025. The information above may be subject to change.
The content of this note should not be considered legal advice and each matter should be considered on a case-by-case basis.
