UK-based cricket league The Hundred has secured over £520million ($649.6m) in investment after all eight of its franchise stakes were sold to investors including owners of football clubs and Indian Premier League (IPL) sides.
Each franchise has been sold either partly or in full to consortiums of private investors following the conclusion of a bidding process run by Deloitte and the Raine Group in conjunction with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), who govern the 100-ball format competition.
The total enterprise value of the eight franchises surpassed £975m with each bid now entering an exclusivity process, which if concluded will result in £520m of investment filtering into leagues governed by the ECB.
The ECB initially owned the eight teams, so the majority had 49 per cent of their stake made available to outside investment with the remaining 51 per cent staying with the host counties.
Lancashire became the first host county to sell part of their stake in their franchise, the Manchester Originals, with 70 per cent owned by the RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group. The Northern Superchargers, based in Yorkshire, then sold the entirety of their stake to Sunrisers Hyderabad.
On Tuesday, Todd Boehly — the chairman and co-owner of Chelsea — bought a 49 per cent stake in The Hundred franchise Trent Rockets, via real estate investment company Cain International, founded by Boehly and his fellow Chelsea board member Jonathan Goldstein.
Boehly, 51, had previously been in the bidding process for the London Spirit, while Manchester United co-owner Avram Glazer also bid for the side who play at the capital’s Lord’s Cricket Ground. Spirit were bought by a consortium of US-based tech billionaires, led by Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, who purchased 49 per cent of the franchise for £145m.
Boehly has bought a stake in Trent Rockets (Julian Finney/Getty Images)
Last week, Knighthead capital — the group which Tom Brady is a partner in and that owns EFL club Birmingham City — bought a 49 per cent stake in the Birmingham Phoenix franchise.
Southern Brave were the final franchise to be purchased this week; India-based conglomerate GMR Group, which is behind IPL side Delhi Capitals, bought 49 per cent of the Southampton-based franchise.
That concluded a process which saw cash injections in the Rockets, the Spirit, the Phoenix, Northern Superchargers, Oval Invincibles, Manchester Originals and Welsh Fire.
ECB chair Richard Thompson described The Hundred’s auction as a “catalyst for cricket’s growth” which “has engaged new fans, showcased world-class players, and been transformational for the women’s game.”
Of the money raised, Thompson said: “This will also secure the funding that will go directly to the professional counties and recreational game, underpinning the fabric of our county game and helping futureproof cricket’s growth in England and Wales for generations to come.”
The IPL, which is played in the Twenty20 format, has been the sport’s most successful and most profitable start-up league with the ECB launching The Hundred, played in a slightly shorter 100-ball format, in 2021.
100-ball cricket means each side’s batting innings is restricted to a maximum of 100 balls. It is slightly shorter than the Twenty20 format, a version of cricket consisting of 20 overs (120 balls) per side. T20 has been added to the Olympic programme and will feature at the 2028 Games in Los Angeles.
The Hundred was designed specifically to bring in younger audiences and families, with reduced ticket prices and intended to appeal to mainstream broadcasters.
While the valuations of the eight Hundred franchises are multiple times their current annual revenues, they are based on projections of the league’s potential and continued long-term growth of short-form cricket as a global entertainment product.
GO DEEPER
Explaining cricket to a baseball expert… now that the U.S. is apparently good at it
(Steven Paston/PA Images via Getty Images)
