The Hundred: Cricket takes the fight to football with near £1bn auction

This might seem like history repeating itself at the Home of Cricket.

A big announcement of a windfall to revitalise the sport in England.

It was 17 years ago that Allen Stanford landed at Lord’s on a helicopter accompanied by a treasure chest of dollar bills.

They turned out to be fake and the tycoon was exposed as a fraudster and jailed.

The American was promising lucrative Twenty20 competitions – the shorter format designed to attract new audiences.

But India created a more dynamic and lucrative competition from the English invention.

So the England and Wales Cricket Board tried again with even shorter matches – each team simply batting for 100 balls.

And four years after the launch of The Hundred, the eight teams have been valued at £975m after an ECB auction.

Not bad for a competition only played for one month every year.

And the array of tech investors and Indian Premier League owners buying into The Hundred don’t even own the venues.

Lifeblood of domestic cricket

These are the grounds home to counties that have been the lifeblood of domestic cricket since 1890.

But this is now the era of franchise cricket where owners are building a network of clubs that could see the best players sent around the world to star in shorter competitions.

It is a revolution resisted by some traditionalists seeing the erosion of longer forms of the sport, up to five-day international tests.

But this is all about trying to attract new, younger audiences – and lure them from the most popular sport.

‘More accessible and more fun’

“Over the last five to 10 years, cricket has grown and the variety of formats that we’ve got just makes it more accessible, more fun and creates more positive noise,” ECB chief executive Richard Gould told Sky News.

“I think it’s time for us to muscle in on football. And I think that’s one of our ambitions.

“When you look at the share of either broadcast revenue or attendees, we want to increase our market share. So certainly we’ve got football in our in our sights.”

Football investors banking on cricket success

Football wants a part too, banking on a boom.

Chelsea’s American co-owner Todd Boehly is part of the group paying £40m for 49% of the Trent Rockets.

The same deal was secured for Birmingham Phoenix by the Birmingham FC ownership, Knighthead Capital Management, which features NFL legend Tom Brady.

Four of the investors also own teams in the Indian Premier League T20 competition including India’s richest family the Ambani’s who are paying £60m for 49% of the Oval Invincibles.

And Silicon Valley wants in with the CEOs of Google and Microsoft among a consortium of tech billionaires paying the most for a team – £145m for almost half of the London Spirit.

It’s a premium to play at Lord’s, the most iconic of venues.

Can The Hundred replicate ‘exciting’ IPL franchise?

Nikesh Arora, chief executive of cyber security firm Palo Alto, told Sky Sports: “IPL has turned out into an amazing franchise because at the end you’ve got to the heartstrings of people and you built a product that they’re really excited about.

“And the question is, can we replicate that collectively in the UK? Because that’s the home of cricket.

“This is the current sort of genre of cricket which is popular, so we like that idea. We like the idea that this is in a country where there’s a natural demand for cricket and aspiration for cricket.”

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And this time the ECB insists there has been full due diligence of the investors – seeing the franchises’ sell-off as a golden opportunity to safeguard the future of cricket.

The windfall will be split between the 18 county teams and the Marylebone Cricket Club, which owns Lord’s and is seen as the guardians of the laws of the sport.

Grassroots to benefit

There’s also set to be £50m for the grassroots game.

But will the jackpot be justified when The Hundred’s men’s and women’s teams only play a month a year?

And if it does boom – will the price be international tests and the domestic country competitions fading?

“It is certainly a really important opportunity for us in history, I think will judge how important it ranks,” Mr Gould said.

“But we know that we’ve got a lot of hard work ahead of us, a lot of exciting work.

“We’ve got eight new investors coming into the gate and we want to make sure that we can match and exceed their own ambitions.”