Six The Hundred franchises sold ahead of 2025 competition, English Cricket Board confirms

New York Times

30-07-2025

English cricket's governing body has confirmed that it has finally completed six of the eight deals it announced in February to sell stakes in the franchises of its short-form competition, The Hundred.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) sold stakes of between 49 and 100 per cent in the city-based franchises following a successful auction at the start of the year but has spent more than five months trying to close the deals with its new partners, a mix of American sports investors and Indian cricket magnates.
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With the fifth edition of the month-long competition starting in London on Tuesday, the ECB will be relieved it has been able to get these deals over the line, as they will deliver more than £520million ($695million) to the professional and grassroots game, but the fact it has taken this long, and is still not fully completed, show just how difficult the process has been.
The six completed deals are with the new investors in Birmingham Phoenix, London Spirit, Manchester Originals, Northern Superchargers, Southern Brave and Welsh Fire, which means negotiations will continue with Reliance Industries, who bought a 49 per cent stake in London's Oval Invincibles for £60million, and Cain International and Ares Management, who teamed up to buy a 49 per cent stake in Nottingham-based Trent Rockets.
In other words, the ECB is still hammering the details out with its two most high-profile investors, as Reliance is owned by India's richest family, the Ambanis, and Cain International is run by Chelsea FC co-owners Todd Boehly and Jonathan Goldstein, while Ares is an American investment firm with stakes in La Liga's Atletico Madrid and the NFL's Miami Dolphins.
It is hoped, by all sides, that these two deals can be signed off in the autumn.
For its part, the ECB has remained confident all of the sales it announced in February will be finalised, at full value, and has said the delay in completing them is a result of having to negotiate with eight different groups, some of them with multiple partners, and their respective legal teams.
This, however, is only half of the story, as the negotiations have thrown up significant questions about The Hundred's future revenues, expansion, format, governance and relationship with the rest of the global game, particularly Indian cricket.
As a result, the ECB has had to make several concessions, such as waiving its right to pull the plug on the competition it launched in 2021 within the next seven years. It has also agreed to dilute its power on The Hundred's governing board so it only has one third of the votes, not the originally-planned 50 per cent.
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The significance of that step is the new investors will have control over The Hundred's likely expansion to 10 teams once the current set of ECB broadcast deals expire in 2032. The Hundred's managing director Vikram Banerjee has said expansion is 'almost a no-brainer' but the first wave of investors will want to make sure revenues have grown sufficiently before they are distributed more widely, and will expect to be rewarded for their early commitment in terms of the allocation of new franchise fees.
They will also want a bigger say in how the tournament is televised, with the ECB currently bundling The Hundred with the rest of its rights, the vast majority of which end up with its long-term broadcast partner Sky Sports. The Hundred, however, is shared between Sky and the BBC, with the UK's free-to-air broadcaster able to show 10 men's and eight women's games per season.
Whether that will still be the case after 2032 is open to question, as The Hundred's new investors will want to remove the competition from the ECB bundle, forcing Sky to pay for it separately or let a new broadcaster in, and the BBC will almost certainly be asked to pay more than the reduced-rate it is paying now — an offer the ECB made to help establish the competition and bring in a new audience, a move it supported by marketing The Hundred as a family-friendly event, with relatively cheap tickets.
In fact, by 2032 it is possible the BBC will no longer be interested in a competition that was specifically designed to fit into its schedules, as games in The Hundred last about two and a half hours, about half an hour shorter than games in the T20 format.
The latter, which was also invented in England, has become the most popular format with global broadcasters and sponsors, as well as younger fans, particularly in India, where the Indian Premier League (IPL) is the most lucrative cricket competition on the planet. It is also the format that will be used when cricket returns to the Olympics in Los Angeles in 2028.
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With half of The Hundred teams — Manchester Originals, Northern Superchargers, Oval Invincibles and Southern Brave — now either co-owned or fully-owned by groups which also own IPL franchises, it is widely believed the English competition will move to the T20 format.
It also almost certain that teams will be given the same names at their IPL stablemates, with this issue believed to be one of the Ambanis' sticking points, as they want the Invincibles to become the Indians, in line with their IPL team the Mumbai Indians and sister teams in the T20 competitions in South Africa, UAE and U.S., where MI New York play in Major League Cricket, perhaps as early as next season.
The biggest unanswered question of all, however, is when Indian cricket's governing body, the BCCI, will allow its best men's players to take part in whatever The Hundred becomes after 2032. At present, it does not want anyone to challenge the IPL's position but with many of its owners now investing in franchise competitions around the globe, the path is clear for England and Wales to become the July/August venue for elite T20's travelling circus.
In the meantime, fans can look forward to another month of big hits, high-paced action and musical interludes, featuring many of the best short-form cricketers in the men's and women's game — usually on the same stage in double-headers, with equal prize money — while the traditional county-based game can start spending the windfall from the auction on clearing debts and investing in ground improvements and other new revenue streams that should keep it afloat for the foreseeable future.