It has been a while since I posted anything on here. Not a deliberate or conscious decision not to, more that I simply didn’t have anything to say that I hadn’t said before. So it came as quite a pleasant surprise to be thinking about something this morning and feeling the need to post about it. You lucky people.
And it is this. The Women’s Cricket World Cup is on, and I am really enjoying it. A resounding “so what?” is an entirely fair response to that statement, so I shall qualify it and explain why. Perhaps it says more about me than anything else, and certainly I do not confuse my own response with anything wider, but perhaps I am not alone and others may have the same kind of response. You see, I didn’t say I am enjoying it, I said I am really enjoying it. And this is new.
Of course, the rise of women’s team sports in the last years can be viewed as a wonderful thing in its own right, both in terms of the profile and as a social good, but you cannot force people to truly want to watch, no matter how much they are harangued to do so, or if social acceptability depends on it. It is an emotional response, to move from “oh the cricket is on” to “ooh the cricket is on”, and that this time around seems to be the personal difference. It isn’t format, it isn’t location, it isn’t because England are especially good, meaning there is a supporter stake in it; it is because the sport, for its own sake, is generating a significant appeal and desire to watch it. I can tell myself I am a modern man, who passionately believes in the equality of opportunity for female sport, and my brain will insist that is true, but I cannot help the fact that I find women’s football unappealing (while absolutely enjoying women’s rugby immensely) as a spectacle. Sorry, it just leaves me cold. You can call me names for that if you like, but I don’t care, it just isn’t something I seek out particularly. Cricket on the other hand, I have most definitely watched and enjoyed for years. But this time around it is more. I am going out of my way to watch the games. All of the games. It has made a personal step up in my desire to see it.
Why that might be, well that is the reason for the post, and I am trying to rationalise it and in truth largely failing. Perhaps it is that familiarity has taken me to the point where I do care what happens, but it certainly isn’t that national pride from English success is raising it in my awareness, because for one thing it is not just their games I am seeking out, for another the flaws in the England team are irritating me and for a third England have won World Cups before. To have an emotional stake in what is happening to the point of irritation is the essence in caring about a sport. The reason I have zero interest in the Hundred is not the format, which is just a game of cricket whatever the attractions or otherwise of it, but because I don’t care who wins any particular game, let alone the competition. Same applies to the IPL. I have no emotional stake in it, male or female teams. International tournaments are in any case different, for you can identify with all the nations whichever of them you might support.
It is dangerous and also rather arrogant to assume that this personal response is shared widely, or indeed by anyone, so perhaps it is a me thing solely, and if so that too is fine. TV audience figures would show to some extent if this a growth area (I suspect so, just because it is growing anyway), but even those do not show the degree of engagement, only that the engagement exists. Caring about outcome, checking the table and working out scenarios, being annoyed that the rain is falling, laughing at how damn lucky England were (and feeling bad for Pakistan at the same time) that the rain did fall – all of these are examples of feeling a connection to what is going on that is greater than background passing interest, and it is a new sensation.
Does this even mean anything? Perhaps not. But it was put to me that A list of commentators – particularly the male ones – at the tournament is in itself an illustration of reaching maturity, that this isn’t a secondary women’s World Cup, it is a World Cup. Posting something like that is inherently risky, for it invites comment that this is how it should have always been, and I can accept that criticism, but I would refer again to the point that you cannot force engagement or interest, only hope that it develops. For me, it has done. And I am pleased. If it is the case for others too, I would be even more pleased.
Today marks the second phase of the process to sell The Hundred’s teams. As news has trickled out of the recent days and weeks, I have started to ask myself the question: If I was a billionaire investor and was offered the opportunity to buy one of the eight Hundred teams, how much would I be willing to pay?
We have been given a unique view into what investors have seen behind the scenes, thanks to an extraordinary leak of confidential ECB projections by IPL founder Lalit Modi. It includes the ECB’s estimates for both revenue and costs up to the year 2032, as well as (perhaps more importantly for us) the actual figures from 2024.
2024
The leaked ECB projections over the course of the next eight years become so positive that even their media partner the BBC has labelled them “overly optimistic”. However, the 2024 figures are presumably fairly accurate and so these are the first things I would look at.
Team
Central Revenue Distribution (£m)
Total Revenue (£m)
Total Costs (£m)
Total Profit (£m)
Birmingham Phoenix
4.5
5.9
5.0
0.9
London Spirit
4.5
6.8
5.8
1.0
Manchester Originals
4.5
6.0
5.0
1.0
Northern Superchargers
4.5
5.8
4.5
1.3
Oval Invincibles
4.5
7.7
5.5
2.2
Southern Brave
4.5
6.1
5.6
0.5
Trent Rockets
4.5
6.2
4.7
1.5
Welsh Fire
4.5
5.4
4.9
0.5
There are two things which leap out at me here, regarding the two London teams. Oval Invincibles appears to have twice as much profit as almost all of the others, whilst London Spirit is only the fourth most profitable franchise due to having the highest level of costs.
So, in the hypothetical scenario in which I have enough money to buy these teams, how much would I pay for these teams if I expected to make a profit based purely on these figures? That would depend on how confident I was about the long-term viability of The Hundred. It’s like the difference between renting out a house or investing in cryptocurrency. People are happy to accept lower rates of return on houses because they can be fairly confident that the asset will still be around in twenty or thirty years time. The same is not true of cryptocurrency and NFTs, so investors want to make as much money as they can as quickly as possible.
For the sake of argument, I will use 8% and 15% gross profits (ie before taxes and other costs) as the two benchmarks. At 8%, I would expect to have earned my stake back within thirteen years. At 15%, that falls to seven years.
Team
Total 2024 Profit (£m)
15% Valuation (£m)
8% Valuation (£m)
Birmingham Phoenix
0.9
6.0
11.3
London Spirit
1.0
6.7
12.5
Manchester Originals
1.0
6.7
12.5
Northern Superchargers
1.3
8.7
16.3
Oval Invincibles
2.2
14.7
27.5
Southern Brave
1.0
6.7
12.5
Trent Rockets
1.5
10.0
18.8
Welsh Fire
0.5
3.3
6.3
Bear in mind that these valuations are for 100% of the teams, and not just the 49% minority stakes which the ECB is currently attempting to sell. The ECB reportedly believe that the teams are collectively worth around £1bn, including the 51% stakes being gifted to the hosts, but the sum of 8% values here is just £117.5m.
2025
Of course, the 2024 season has already been and gone. If I were to buy a team, the first opportunity I would get to actually do anything would be in 2025. This is important because most of the contracts agreed from the beginning of The Hundred expired in 2024; The Sky and BBC TV deals, the KP Snacks sponsorship, the hosting agreements, and the County Partnership Agreement which governs how much professional cricketers are paid in England to name a few. The ECB slides leaked by Lalit Modi gives hints to how some of these are going to change.
There are two possible rationales for how both can be true. One is that Sky and the ECB signed the contract covering these years in 2022, before the second edition of The Hundred, under the assumption that audiences would increase year-on-year. They have in fact fallen in each successive season, but the perceived value to Sky in 2022 might have been higher than it would be now. The other possible reason is simply that Sky pays for everything in a single block payment, and it is the ECB which arbitrarily assigns values to each individual asset. I have written before about how they appear to intentionally and systematically undervalue women’s cricket in these calculations, for example. The ECB are trying to sell The Hundred teams to investors, and so they stand to make more money from this if the TV value of the competition is higher.
Despite the growth in central revenue thanks to the domestic TV rights, the ECB’s projections show decreased profits for each team by over 40% in 2025 due to increased costs. Hosting fees more than double for each team, whilst team wages increase by over 80%. Both of these costs appear to be written in stone and non-negotiable (presumably already agreed with the host grounds and players’ union), which means that any new owner cannot avoid taking this hit.
Team
2024 Profit (£m)
2025 Profit (£m)
Birmingham Phoenix
0.9
0.4
London Spirit
1.0
0.6
Manchester Originals
1.0
0.4
Northern Superchargers
1.3
0.7
Oval Invincibles
2.2
1.7
Southern Brave
1.0
0.4
Trent Rockets
1.5
0.8
Welsh Fire
0.5
0.4
Total
9.4
5.4
These figures look terrible, but if I was an investor then the one thing which would leap out at me is that teams in The Hundred are currently making a loss in terms of live attendance. The total projected ticket revenue for the group stages in 2025 is £10.9m, but the total costs (excluding hosting fees, because teams need a TV-capable cricket ground even with no fans) are £14.3m. That is the sum of Ticketing (a small and unavoidable cost), Event Delivery (fireworks, live music, and other non-cricket entertainment) and Marketing. If you cut the last two by 90%, which would align both budgets with typical costs in the T20 Blast, then that frees up roughly £12m across the eight teams.
If each team did this, resulting in higher profits than the ECB’s 2024 figures, then the projected team values almost double as a result.
Team
Total Profit (£m)
15% Valuation (£m)
8% Valuation (£m)
Birmingham Phoenix
1.9
12.9
24.1
London Spirit
2.4
16.0
30.0
Manchester Originals
1.9
12.9
24.1
Northern Superchargers
1.9
12.5
23.4
Oval Invincibles
3.3
22.1
41.5
Southern Brave
1.9
12.9
24.1
Trent Rockets
2.2
14.3
26.9
Welsh Fire
1.8
12.3
23.0
From a total team value of £117.5m based on the 2024 figures and an 8% annual return, this increases to £217.1m if owners cut costs for the 2025 season. It is still a long way short of the ECB’s stated £1bn valuation for the eight team franchises, but at least demonstrates a potential upward trajectory.
On a related note, a few teams might see an opportunity to increase ticket prices in order to make even more money. This isn’t viable for everyone (Welsh Fire had half the ticket revenue of any other team in 2024, for example), but Oval Invincibles could arguably gain a few hundred thousand pounds every year.
A Volatile Future
As with almost any prediction, the ECB’s projections become less and less reliable the further into the future they go. The general consensus, not just from people with obvious motives to talk down the value of the competition like Modi, is that ECB’s long-term expectations in terms of overseas TV and sponsorship revenues appear virtually unattainable. Given the lack of Indian men’s cricketers and the unfavourable time difference between the UK and India, there is a natural cap on how much widespread interest The Hundred can attract in the Indian public. There will be some, and is already, but a large portion of that will be based around gambling rather than any actual affinity for the competition. This can be seen in some county Youtube feeds, where the comments are often overrun by Indian bettors
The financial foundation of The Hundred is the domestic TV revenue from Sky and a Freeview partner (I say “a Freeview partner” because the BBC has yet to indicate whether they will be broadcasting any English cricket on television next year). The ECB predict this will be worth £85.0m in 2029, which equates to 64% of the ECB’s income which is distributed to the teams even with a projected 1050% increase in overseas TV revenue and 390% increase in sponsorship revenue from 2024 which many people consider unrealistic.
Is £85m a year an attainable sum? Possibly. UK sports broadcasting deals are amongst the most valuable in the world, which is one reason why American sports leagues like the NFL court UK broadcasters with games in London and contemplate hosting teams here. It isn’t a wholly ludicrous amount, if The Hundred can gather some momentum in the next few years.
Aside from increasing the number of viewers, there are a few other factors which could boost the value of any UK TV deal. Competition is a big one. The TV rights for English cricket from 2020-2024 experienced a big increase thanks to a bidding war between Sky Sports and BT Sport. In 2022, when the next contract was signed, BT Sport was about to be taken over and not interested and so Sky were able to get the rights with no increase at all. If the ECB were able to have TNT Sport or streamers such as Amazon become serious contenders then it would almost certainly increase how much money they would expect to get.
There is also the most obvious path to securing more TV money: Play more matches. If The Hundred lasted 6 weeks then it would clearly be worth more to a broadcaster. It would be unpalatable to the counties and probably make the existence of an English international window untenable, but if the ECB was desperate to finance The Hundred then it would be an option.
All of this assumes that Sky will want to bid for The Hundred in 2029 at all. The number of viewers has fallen in every successive season of The Hundred. If this continues then at some point it will fall below the threshold of profitability for Sky. It is an expensive competition to produce daily coverage for, relative to the T20 Blast for example, and a lot more expensive per game than the Blast (or other T20 leagues) in terms of the rights.
One question which might ring alarm bells for potential investors is whether the ECB’s projections include all of The Hundred’s costs. A review of the ECB’s accounts by Fanos Hira in 2023 suggested that there was an additional £14.5m per year of expenses which the ECB didn’t include in their internal project budgets. This might include the use of the ECB’s offices, central ECB staff spending time working on the competition, the promotional materials attached to the All Stars and Dynamos programmes, amongst many other things. If The Hundred is spun off as an autonomous entity, one in which the majority of counties no longer have a financial stake in its success, then there is little reason to suppose this extra support will continue.
With this level of uncertainty about The Hundred’s main source of revenue and the dubious nature of the ECB’s other projections, the level of risk goes up for potential investors and therefore the value of the teams goes down. In order to counteract this, I suspect that the ECB will have to give specific guarantees to buyers about both the central financial payments and maintaining the broader ecosystem of support around the competition.
Put simply: If I was buying a team, I would insist on a contract where the ECB guaranteed to pay me £5.3m per year from 2029 to 2032 (as the ECB’s projections state), regardless of whether The Hundred’s TV deals and sponsorships were sufficient to cover this amount or not. If that has to be subsidised from the ECB’s Test revenue, so be it. In fact, I’d probably push for a contract lasting at least a decade and possibly more.
Don’t Forget The Women
Most articles about the sale of The Hundred teams, and the sale itself, seems to completely forget about the women’s competition. This is a mistake, for a number of reasons.
The Hundred has a claim to be the premier domestic women’s cricket competition in the world. It has the greatest attendance of any women’s cricket competition, including ICC World Cups. It has a very high standard of play, which only stands to increase next year as every single player will be a full-time professional. Only the WPL, with its vast TV audience, overshadows it in terms of financial performance.
The gap in UK TV viewership between the men’s and women’s Hundred has fallen by roughly 60% between 2021 and 2024, suggesting that the women’s competition is gaining in terms of popularity (or at least declining less quickly). In fact, if this pattern continues then the women’s Hundred could overtake the men’s as the most valuable aspect of the TV package within the next decade. I am not joking.
So, despite the fact that a lot of people consider women’s cricket to have zero commercial value and the proceeds of selling eight women’s teams won’t send an extra penny towards women’s cricket in England and Wales, a speculative investor might well look at the women’s competition and see an opportunity to get in on the ground floor before its true value is realised.
It’s Not Just About Money
The whole of this post has assumed that the reasons for someone buying a team in The Hundred are purely financial. There are a few other considerations which may push the value up for some investors.
If someone already owns a number of T20 team franchises, then an English team offers a chance to scout and hire English players for their overseas teams. It also promotes their team’s brand in what is a lucrative sports market, even if this particular competition isn’t the most successful.
It has been suggested that some overseas investors are attracted by the idea of owning a bit of English cricket. The after-effects of being part of the British Empire, followed by the dominance of England and Australia within global cricket until the 21st Century, means that a number of Indian billionaires see this as an opportunity to ‘stick it to the man’. To impress on the ECB that it is India and Indians who hold reins of power now.
There is also the possibility of buying political influence. Anyone who buys a team becomes, at the very least, a business partner with the ECB. If you consider how obsequious the ECB is towards Sky, then it certainly appears to be the case that the ECB will bend over backwards to support the interests of companies they work with. If you’re a billionaire who can afford to lose the money, why not spend £50m on a sports team which coincidentally increases your chances of getting measures you support through ICC meetings?
But even with all of the intangible benefits, the potential of the women’s teams and the cost-cutting I’ve listed above, I cannot fathom why anyone would think the total value of the teams could be worth more than £400m or so. Even that figure feels highly generous. If the ECB and counties are expecting a billion pound payday, I expect they will be disappointed.
Richard Gould has said that he won’t sell the teams for less than he thinks they’re worth, but the pressure from nearly-bankrupt counties like Yorkshire for extra cash will be too much to withstand for long. The Hundred’s teams will be sold, soon, for whatever amount the investors offer. If cricket wasn’t something I loved watching, I’d be eating some popcorn whilst watching the slow motion car crash of what used to be the most popular sport in the country self-destructing through its own hubris and incompetence.
As it is, at this point I’m just hoping English cricket survives a little longer than I do.
Thanks for reading this cheery blog post. If you have any comments on it, or anything else, please leave them below.
I don’t think I’ll be making any predictions in this post.
England went into the last match against possibly the best team in the world with a debutant spinner, another spinner with one Test under his belt, an injury-prone bowler as their main spin option plus a single fast bowler who could only be expected to offer very short, sharp spells. Oh, and Joe Root who is apparently an allrounder now. To top it all off, they conceded a first innings lead of 190.
And then they won.
What does anything mean now? Experience, form, preparation, home advantage. They’re all lies, I guess. England’s trio of specialist spinners will have 3 Tests, 41 first class matches and 85 first class wickets between them, and they’re facing India. A week ago I’d have been worried. Now? I’m mainly confused, although not quite a believer to the extent some people appear to be in suggesting England are favourites. There’s literally nothing in the history of cricket which can explain what’s happening in front of our eyes. The closest I can get to expressing it is this picture:
I memed. That is what this team has driven me to.
Feel free to leave your comments below. I’m just setting my alarm clock for 3.55am…
After almost six months of exclusively white ball cricket for England, and a decidedly lacklustre six months at that, it is time for the England Test team to once again grace our televisions. Well, some of our televisions. If subscribing to Sky Sports has been a severely limiting factor on who can or chooses to watch live English cricket nowadays, then this series being on TNT Sport (BT Sport rebranded) will restrict viewership even more.
The run up to this series has also seemed oddly muted. The ECB opted to have a ten-day training camp in Abu Dhabi rather than play full matches against teams in India itself. This decision has been justified by the England camp by suggesting that this allows the batters and bowlers more time actually practicing their skills as opposed to just two or four innings in a typical pre-series warm-up. Certainly there is (some) logic in this approach. Host countries are certainly not above using gamesmanship with touring team’s preparations, providing pitches and opponents totally unlike what awaits them in the series for example. At the same time, the majority of the squad won’t have played a full red ball game in six months and may lack ‘match sharpness’ at the beginning of this series.
Both teams have been affected by events at home, with Harry Brook and Virat Kohli leaving the series (at least temporarily) due to personal reasons. I agree (for once) with Jonathan Agnew that this represents a welcome change from the status quo in professional cricket. Decades ago, a cricketer would have been risking their entire career if they left mid-tour due to a family tragedy or the birth of their child. They would have been portrayed in the media as ‘soft’, ‘lacking fortitude’ and ‘weak’, and it would certainly hurt their future chances of selection.
Of course, this evolution within cricket isn’t really due to more enlightened people within teams and the media as much as it is about the shifting power dynamics in the game. Twenty years ago or more, cricketers were really not paid very much. They were dependent on being selected for the national team to pay their bills, often with minimal savings or investments. Governing boards and the often petty selectors would hold this over players even thinking about taking a break. Between both lucrative central contracts (thanks to increased TV rights values) and extensive T20 league opportunities, top cricketers are rarely in desperate need for a pay cheque. Kohli is presumably set for life at this point of his career, but even the relatively young Brook could be in a financial position where he never has to work again at the age of 24. Certainly if he is as frugal as the stereotypical Yorkshire resident is portrayed.
Brook’s omission paves the way for Ben Foakes to return to the side. It was always likely, I would say, given the likely pitch conditions England will face through the series. Foakes is one of the most impressive wicketkeepers in the world when at the stumps, and with the idea being mooted that they will play three spinners (plus Root) and one pace bowler in the first Test that will be a vital skill. At the same time, sources within the team were saying that it was possible Bairstow would have the gloves just a couple of weeks ago and it certainly wouldn’t be out of character for McCullum and Stokes to go with that approach again.
One entertaining aspect of Foakes’ return is the effusive praise he has received from his captain.
“[Ben Foakes] can not only do things other keepers can’t, but also make them look incredibly easy. […] He’s a very special talent behind there and having someone like that who can maybe take a 2%, 3% chance, that could be massive in the series.” – Ben Stokes
Yes. This is what we were saying eight months ago. If only Ben Stokes was Test captain then, he could have selected Foakes for the Ashes.
All of which brings us to what may become a significant controversy through the tour. Shoaib Bashir, a 20 year-old spinner who has played in just 6 first class matches and was named in the England squad for this series is not currently in India because his visa application has been delayed. The reason for this delay is simple: His parents were born in Pakistan. There is a separate visa application process for anyone with Pakistani parents where they have to provide extensive personal and financial details, and it typically takes at least 6 weeks (and often more) to be completed. Bashir’s selection was announced just over 6 weeks ago.
The singling out of a single England squad member due to their ethnicity on a tour has drawn some parallels with the Basil D’Oliveira affair in 1968. The attempt by the South African Apartheid government to prevent the ‘mixed-race’ D’Oliveira from entering the country as part of the England Test team led to the the tour being boycotted entirely. This is, for many reasons, unlikely to happen here.
Not unlike between players and selectors, the balance of power between nations has changed dramatically in the past two decades. India are now the financial superpower of cricket, in respect of both other boards and individual cricketers. The ECB revenues when India tours England are on a par with Ashes summers, which is one reason why this is a 5-Test series. They are also seeking funding for The Hundred from IPL team owners. If they upset the BCCI then they might only agree to a 2-Test tour in the next cycle, potentially costing the ECB over £100m. Players are presumably also mindful that anything they say in this situation could risk them being unofficially blacklisted by IPL teams and missing out on millions themselves.
Of course, these conflicts of interest are nothing new. In the 23 years England refused to tour Apartheid South Africa on moral grounds, a lot of English cricketers ignored the boycott primarily due to the large amounts of money on offer at the time. Graham Gooch, Geoffrey Boycott, Mike Gatting, Simon Hughes, John Emburey and Chris Broad amongst many others went there to play cricket. Ultimately, there is a fairly broad acceptance that most people (and organisations) have their price and Indian cricket is more than wealthy enough to pay it.
At the same time, English cricket has been rocked by multiple discrimination scandals in recent years which makes the ECB’s response in this matter more critical than ever. It is easy for the ECB to pay for photo shoots and T-shirts proclaiming their principles and moral foundations, or a few token payments to schemes intended to improve equity within the sport. The senior players can talk about how inclusive the dressing room culture is nowadays in the England camp. One of their teammates is being openly and blatantly discriminated against, and they appear (at least publicly) to be doing nothing. This is the impression that people will take away from this. The ECB says a lot of the right things, but does nothing when it is time to act.
Bashir’s absence will have a tangible effect on the England Test team and perhaps this series. He was the only full-time off-spinner included in the squad, with Leach, Ahmed and Hartley all spinning the ball the other way. He has triple the first team experience Rehan Ahmed had when he made his Test debut, and it’s certainly not unrealistic that Bashir would have been selected if available. In that sense, the Indian Government’s application of their stringent immigration laws has materially affected the outcome on the field.
Perhaps the result of this series should be marked by an asterisk to note that England were prevented from selecting their first choice team?
If you have any comments about the post, the match, or anything else please leave them below.
Being Outside Cricket 