Eng­lish crick­et has gen­er­at­ed around $650 mil­lion from the sale of stakes in fran­chis­es in The Hun­dred to big-busi­ness in­vestors from In­dia and the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing con­sor­tiums in­volv­ing NFL great Tom Brady and Los An­ge­les Dodgers part-own­er Todd Boehly.

Auc­tions held over the past two weeks drew bids that val­ue the eight teams in The Hun­dred — a for­mat sim­i­lar to Twen­ty20 and launched in Eng­land on­ly in 2021 — at more than $1.2 bil­lion.

Eng­lish crick­et of­fi­cials con­firmed the huge fig­ures for the first time on Thurs­day and set out how they want the mon­ey spent. The pri­or­i­ty? Safe­guard­ing the fu­ture of the do­mes­tic game that has lurched in­to fi­nan­cial strife in re­cent years.

“We’ve reached a sem­i­nal mo­ment for crick­et in Eng­land and Wales,” said Richard Thomp­son, chair­man of the Eng­land and Wales Crick­et Board.

The in­vestors who se­cured stakes in the fran­chis­es range from Sil­i­con Val­ley tech gi­ants in­clud­ing Google CEO Sun­dar Pichai and Mi­crosoft CEO Satya Nadel­la, to four In­di­an con­glom­er­ates al­ready own­ing teams in the wide­ly pop­u­lar In­di­an Pre­mier League.

Throw in the likes of Knight­head Cap­i­tal Man­age­ment, which in­cludes Brady and al­ready owns Birm­ing­ham City soc­cer club, and Cain In­ter­na­tion­al, a com­pa­ny co-fund­ed by Boehly, and there’s now a heavy dose of ex­per­tise in fi­nance, tech­nol­o­gy and elite sport in a once-quaint sport that has been su­per­charged by mon­ey from around the world.

Lessons from the Stan­ford scan­dal

It was 17 years ago when Allen Stan­ford, a Tex­an busi­ness­man, flew in­to Lord’s — the so-called “home of crick­et” in north­west Lon­don — aboard a pri­vate he­li­copter filled with fake dol­lar notes in a pub­lic­i­ty stunt for a re­mark­able deal he reached with the ECB: A five-match T20 se­ries be­tween Eng­land and su­per­stars from the Caribbean worth $100 mil­lion.

The ECB were in rap­tures for a sup­pos­ed­ly game-chang­ing deal that quick­ly went wrong when Stan­ford was charged with — and lat­er con­vict­ed of — fraud.

So, has the ECB learnt its lessons af­ter hit­ting the jack­pot again?

“This has prob­a­bly been done in a dif­fer­ent style — a bit more mut­ed,” ECB chief ex­ec­u­tive Richard Gould said on a video call. “We are very con­fi­dent in the in­vestor group we have got. ... We haven’t been com­pla­cent.”

The ECB has done “ex­ten­sive due dili­gence” and “all the checks to en­sure it will be a dif­fer­ent out­come” to the Stan­ford de­ba­cle, di­rec­tor of busi­ness op­er­a­tions Vikram Baner­jee said.

Could games be played abroad?

The ECB seems open to that, yes.

“We’d be fool­ish not to lis­ten to the amaz­ing set of in­vestors that have got great ideas,” Gould said. “We need to make sure we are a gov­ern­ing body that pro­vides sta­bil­i­ty but al­so en­ables our in­vestors and coun­ty clubs to dri­ve for­ward.”

Gould made ref­er­ence to the NFL tak­ing games over­seas and al­so the idea — float­ed around in 2008 but nev­er adopt­ed — of a 39th round of Eng­lish Pre­mier League games played abroad.

Are for­eign in­vestors con­trol­ling Eng­lish crick­et?

No, the ECB in­sists.

The gov­ern­ing body said it still owns The Hun­dred as a com­pe­ti­tion and felt it was im­por­tant the “struc­ture of the game is re­tained and owned by the ECB and our mem­bers (the coun­ties).” That means the sched­ule, the for­mats and the gov­er­nance of Eng­lish crick­et.

Ex­pect, how­ev­er, the new in­vestors to make changes to their fran­chis­es when it comes to team names, colours and brand­ing in The Hun­dred from 2026.

Chang­ing the times when match­es are played — to po­ten­tial­ly suit In­di­an au­di­ences, for ex­am­ple — is “not on the agen­da,” Gould said, be­cause se­cur­ing strong at­ten­dances in­side the sta­di­ums is a pri­or­i­ty.

Baner­jee said there was no in­ten­tion to turn the Hun­dred — a for­mat where each team re­ceives a max­i­mum of 100 balls — in­to a T20 com­pe­ti­tion but could en­vis­age the com­pe­ti­tion hav­ing a sec­ond tier if there is enough growth.

The ECB said the new in­vestors have a “lock-in pe­ri­od” of five years be­fore they can sell their shares to oth­er par­ties.

So, where will all the mon­ey go?

The ECB said the deals, once fi­nal­ized af­ter an ex­clu­siv­i­ty pe­ri­od, will un­der­pin “long-term fi­nan­cial sus­tain­abil­i­ty” in the do­mes­tic game in Eng­land.

Pro­ceeds from the sales will be split 19 ways — be­tween the 18 long-es­tab­lished coun­ty teams in the Eng­lish and Welsh do­mes­tic game as well as the Maryle­bone Crick­et Club, which owns Lord’s and is re­gard­ed as the guardian of the laws of the game. The grass­roots game is in line to re­ceive around 50 mil­lion pounds ($62 mil­lion), the ECB said.

“Our three over­ar­ch­ing prin­ci­ples as we look at what we want this in­vest­ment to de­liv­er should be strate­gic, am­bi­tious and leav­ing a lega­cy,” Thomp­son said in an open let­ter. “We may not get this chance again for at least a gen­er­a­tion and can­not af­ford to waste this gold­en op­por­tu­ni­ty.”

Thomp­son spoke of the mon­ey head­ing to “three core in­vest­ment ar­eas”: Build­ing re­serves, rev­enue gen­er­a­tion or debt re­duc­tion.

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Sto­ry by STEVE DOU­GLAS | As­so­ci­at­ed Press