The report comes from this week’s CNBC UK Exchange Newsletter with Ian King. Like what you saw? You can subscribe here.
Scheduling
In England, it’s already a breathtaking cricket summer.
A fierce five-test match against India (the Financial Power Park of Global Cricket) ended earlier this week The greatest game ever.
beside. Cricket comes in many forms. The longest, known as a test match, can last five days and still have the potential to end in a draw. Then there is one-day international. 50 “Overs” can be scored on each side, while one equal six balls. Next, there are twenty 20 or T20, and each side gets 20 points or 120 goals.
Finally, there are a hundred of them, the shortest being the creativity of the sport’s dominant institution other ECB).
The competition is now a large business, with the country’s total investments (mainly from the United States and India) attracting professional cricket in the country earlier this year. More later.
A hundred started Tuesday, playing for five weeks during the summer break at English school, born in a highly political setting.
Ostensibly the cricket committee believes it attracts new young fans to be confused. However, in fact, it also aims to take electricity from 18 counties that are traditionally the cornerstone of professional cricket in England and Wales.
The cricket committee had no assets of its own before a hundred, except for television rights (and accompanied by business opportunities) to the England men’s and women’s international teams, and most of this revenue returned to the county. It is worrying that the value of these television rights may decline as franchise cricket can potentially undermine the possibility of international cricket in countries such as India and Australia. Therefore, created my own game.
On the fifth day of the Test match between England and India on August 4, 2025 in London, England, England.
Andy Kearns | Getty Images Sport | Getty Images
One hundred county teams received a large sum of money to comfort any objections. These concerns are good, and are revealed in some way by the events: The game played at the peak of the summer pushed traditional county fixtures to the edge of the season, as many of the best county players (who paid a good salary for that) competed.
This marginalization has hurt the county champion, the sport’s most enduring game, including domestic competitions, including the T20 Blast, the largest money-maker in Britain and Wales counties in the past few decades.
One hundred started a tricky start. The first draft of the game was held in October 2019, months before Covid hit, paying it to the planned first season.
When the Hundred finally started in 2021, the cricket committee saw it as an instant success: packed up places, high TV viewers, and viewed nearly 35 million clips on social media.
Some people are not surprised by this.
Mike Atherton, a former England captain and arguably now the sport’s most distinguished writer and broadcaster, wrote in The Times at the end of the first season: “Cricket is a great game. Stage it in high summer, charge reasonable prices, give it the oxygen of free-to-air TV allied to the muscle and expertise of an established cricket broadcaster, create a condensed tournament with one match a night so that the narrative is easily Followed, and then pour all your love, attention and marketing expenses, people of all ages, gender, background and abilities will come.”
Since then, a hundred have continued to flourish, especially financially. This confirmation comes after one hundred teams worth more than £975 million ($1.3 billion) in February this year, after the three rounds of bidding process attracted interest from all over the world.
Crucially, while bringing £520 million to reinvest the sport, the England and Wales Cricket Council retained the controlling stake in the match.
It was a special victory for board chairman Richard Thompson, who recently revealed that on the second day of his work in 2022, he received an offer from private equity firm Bridgepoint to buy the entire tournament for £350 million.
Some of the payments paid for shares in the team are extraordinary.
Silicon Valley-based top-seen cricket investor holding company paid £145 million for 49% of London Spirit, a franchise based in Lord’s, an iconic cricket stadium known as the “Cricket House”.
Cricket Investor Holdings is led by Nikesh Arora, CEO of cybersecurity giant Palo Alto Networks, and backed by Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and Silver Lake, the U.S. tech investment giant.
However, some other teams have already put a large sum of money. Another London-based franchise, Oval Invincipibles, is estimated at £125 million, after a 49% stake was sold to global Rise Worldwide, a subsidiary of Reliance Industries, the wealthiest family in India, Ambanis. They also own the Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League (IPL), as well as their sister teams, Mib Cape Town, MI Amirates and Mi New York.
Meanwhile, Manchester’s original book is worth £116 million after Indian conglomerate RPSG, controlled by billionaire Sanjiv Goenka, acquired a 70% stake, which also owns the Lucknow super giant IPL team.
Nottinghamshire’s Trent Rockets, worth £79 million, acquired a 49% stake by Jonathan Goldstein and Cain International, the U.S. co-owner of Chelsea Football Club.
“haves” and “hove-nots”
Not surprisingly, all this money has come to new attention given the enthusiasm of the sport and its knowledgeable fan base.
One is that the money will be wasted, just like the English Rugby Union, when private equity firm CVC Capital Partners acquired the sport’s top domestically competitive stake in 2013, it received a huge cash injection. Three clubs – the Hornets, Worcester Warriors and the London Irish – went bankrupt and several other clubs were shaking on the edge.
Another question related to the first is whether English games are further divided between “haves” and “not-nots”. The first Leonard Curtis Cricket Financial Report released last month shows that the three largest counties (Surry, Lancashire and Birmingham-based Warwick County) already account for 44% of the total revenue of all 18 first-class counties in 2023. These three are all three, as part of the host country, a team of one million. The three poorest counties – Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Northamptonshire – account for only 5.6%.
The report’s co-author Rob Wilson said many counties rely too much on funding from the England and Wales cricket boards, but added that a hundred counties could be a crucial turning point.
He told the Guardian: “The reality is that the ECB’s revenue structure makes the county exist in the format it is in.
“It’s important that the ECB takes care of the money and how they allocate it so that the club doesn’t waste it.”
Another question about purists, especially purists, it and other franchised cricket continue to ignore the quality and regularity of international fixtures. There have been skirmishes: For example, last year, England recalled IPL players before the T20 World Cup. England avoided choosing one of its players, Jacob Bethell, to compete with Zimbabwe in Test matches so he could continue to compete in the IPL matches.
So there is already a club with national tensions on the court – similar to those that have swept professional football for years, and given the extraordinary rewards offered, especially in the IPL, players may choose to franchise cricket over time over time.
This has been seen worldwide in cricket countries with fewer economies. South Africans Quinton de Kock and Heinrich Klaasen and Trinidadian Nicholas Pooran are the most closed players in the T20 format in the West Indies, and are those who have succumbed to international cricket in international cricket, more than they have succumbed to international cricket in the past few years.
Franchise cricket is already where most TV revenues are offered in the rest of the world. Only the Big Three of Global Sports – India, Australia and England – The Match Test Series lasted more than three games before facing each other (although the Australians will host four games against New Zealand next December).
South Africa recently passed the neutral taste of Australia as the world exam champion and didn’t have another home test series until September 2026. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka will only compete in 10 Test matches between now and February 2027.
The most dedicated supporters of British cricket don’t want to see this here.
However, for the moment, this is the peak of the summer and a hundred seasons, it will feature the world’s best cricketers, some of whom (such as Australia’s Steve Smith, New Zealand’s Rachin Ravindra and Afghanistan’s Noor Ahmad, who will be in the game for the first time. There’s a lot to look forward to.
– Ian King
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Need to know
On the market
UK stocks have been holding for the past week FTSE 100 The distance to 9,142.73 on Tuesday is 9,142.73. Investor eyes have been elsewhere as multiple countries and the European Union scramble to sign trade deals with the United States before President Donald Trump’s deadline. The British leader Trade Agreement Along with the United States, a May strike.
The Financial Times Stock Exchange 100 index has performed over the past year.
UK government bond yields fall as US Treasury bonds. Disappointing work report Expanded American slideshow. British 10 years of gold plating output At the end of Tuesday, trading was about 4.52%, down from 4.61% a week ago.
this poundMeanwhile, it is against the dollar as traders continue to bet on another tax rate cut by the Bank of England this Thursday.
– Bishop Katrina
Here comes
August 7: Bank of England’s interest rate decision
August 12: Unemployment rate in June
