Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive, says there is a “strong consensus” that the Hundred should be opened up to private investment in English cricket, and that American and British sports team owners and IPL franchises have expressed their interest. Clear.
Following the end of the Hundred’s third season in August, the ECB held a consultation with first-class counties to discuss the ownership model of the competition’s eight clubs, each comprising a men’s and women’s team. Several options have been floated, with host counties likely to offer equity stakes in teams playing at their home venue.
Counties are free to sell those shares to interested investors or retain them if they choose. The governing body will retain ownership of the competition as a whole, which is reportedly worth more than £1 billion, but can sell its own stake in the teams.
Debates will continue but Gould’s comments are the clearest indication yet that private investment is imminent. “The future of the Hundred is very strong in terms of ticket sales, broadcast interest and franchise interest, in terms of third-party investors who are now interested in it,” he said at the launch of the 2024 season at The Oval.
“We’ve been having really good discussions with the game. There’s a strong consensus that we want private investment to come in. There’s a strong consensus that it should be through investment in teams rather than central competition. And now we’re working through the options of how that could potentially look in terms of how regulation, revenue and capital are distributed. Doing.”
Gould does not expect English cricket to follow South Africa’s lead in selling all eight hundred teams to IPL team owners. “Our interest is not just with the IPL franchises,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of interested sports owners from the (United) States and this country. So we’ll look at all those options.”
The ECB initially told counties it intended to confirm the changes by the end of May and implement them in time for the 2025 season, but cooled on that time frame. “We’re not putting a big deadline on it,” Gould said, adding that consensus on the broad principles surrounding Hundred’s future has yet to be reflected in detail.
“The game has suffered from divisions for the last five or six years, and instead of rushing people, we’re going to take some time to get to the conclusions that we think the game is looking for,” Gould said. “We can, frankly, create more value with a game that works as one.”
The ECB is still resigned to the fact that the BCCI will not issue no-objection certificates to active men’s players to feature in overseas short-form leagues. “It’s not something we’re working on in our process,” Gould said. “I can see why: they (BCCI) have got a strong global position there and they want to try and make sure they maintain that.
“Indian broadcast money usually follows Indian players… The BCCI and the IPL have just said, ‘No, we want the IPL to be the No. 1 global tournament and to do that, we have to make sure that we depend on ourselves. The size of our market and the quality of our players may change at some point. .. but we haven’t based any of our models at this point.
Some smaller counties are concerned that the proposed ownership models could further entrench the gulf between them and the bigger clubs, but Gould dismissed the idea that the ECB’s administration is secretly hoping to kill off some counties as a “totally crazy conspiracy” theory.
“I’ve been in the game for 20-odd years and there’s always that conversation, but we’re the one professional sport (in England) that hasn’t lost a club and we’ve been going for 140-odd years. Look at rugby and football, we’ve done a great sport to maintain that 100% record and right there. We have a purpose.
“The depth of our talent pool in terms of men and women is our superpower at the moment… Having more teams and more players and more depth to our talent pool is ideal. Where we want to be. It will increase. I don’t see any backward step in terms of 18 first-class counties. .”
“But we have to make sure clubs aren’t constrained by that, so we can make sure (counties) are particularly good at getting talent or crowds through the doors … we have to make sure they are celebrated. We have to let clubs and counties fly.”
Matt Roller is an Associate Editor at ESPNcricinfo. @mroller98