Selling there souls.

[bwildered]

Yorkshire have gone the whole hog, the others only half.

The six sales so far come to a total of around ?466m, the majority of which will be split among the 18 first-class counties, Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and recreational game.
It means the value of the six teams in their entirety comes to around ?740m.

Last week Surrey negotiated a ?60m price with the owners of Mumbai Indians for a 49% stake in the Oval Invincibles, while keeping the 51% given to them by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).
Warwickshire agreed a 49% sale of Birmingham Phoenix to Birmingham City owners Knighthead Capital for ?40m and Glamorgan sold the same stake in Welsh Fire to IT entrepreneur Sanjay Govil for ?40m.
A price of ?145m for 49% of Lord's-based London Spirit was agreed between MCC and a Silicon Valley consortium led by Nikesh Arora, while Lancashire became the first county to sell part of their share when agreeing a deal for 70% of the Originals with the owners of Lucknow Super Giants for around ?81m.
Nottinghamshire are also set to sell a 49% stake in Trent Rockets in the coming days.

[Cartero]

Now that the ECB is well on the way to achieving the commercial objective that was obviously behind the whole thing from the start, why not drop the nonsensical pretence that they were out to create a new and exciting format etc etc, and turn the 100 into a T20 so that it's actually a format the rest of the world plays?

[dazedpenguin]

The Hundred will almost certainly revert to a T20 tournament (with a suitably hyperbolic name- the Big Bash and Big Smash have already been taken. The Big Mash perhaps?). But it will need to be a much better tournament to get the returns that the new investors will be looking for. Several of them may have the clout to get some of the Indian players involved and that would have a huge impact on interest and TV rights.

But for Essex they're probably looking at a windfall of around ?30 million, paid over a few years, and some further payments when the franchises sell their 51% stakes. But I would guess that the future ECB payouts will be substantially less with a separate TV contract for the Hundred and franchises keeping the spoils.

So how do Essex invest it? Pay off debt, fund ground improvements, invest it? Go all out to try and secure one of the 2 likely new franchises? (Durham are a shoo in for one).

[nat]

Call it ?The Big Con?

[dazedpenguin]

Call it ?The Big Con?

They've certainly attracted a lot of investment. I'm not sure what they're actually buying, but it's certainly been a successful con- much to the surprise of many (including me).

But what should Essex do with the money?

[SirChef26]

Say what you like about the comp and how they've gone about it. They've managed to raise almost half a billion quid for six non-majority stakes and two majority stakes of six pop-up teams who exist for less than four weeks of the year in a tournament still owned by the ECB and that is less than five years old. It's astonishing to be honest, and very depressing in a way, that a young pop up franchise based at Lord's is valued at almost 300m and every single one of these franchises are valued vastly higher than a county club almost 150 years old, which would struggle to fetch 10m.

So how do Essex invest it? Pay off debt, fund ground improvements, invest it? Go all out to try and secure one of the 2 likely new franchises? (Durham are a shoo in for one).

The latter DP, that's what Essex have to do. Vastly improved/expanded and/or new ground, go all out to secure a franchise of its own and secure the club's future. That's what every county will try and do with their bounty, see Gloucestershire (new ground) and Kent (redeveloped Beckenham), Essex are in a dogfight to survive.

There's no going back now my friends, the money has been taken, this tournament is never going away, so if you can't beat them, join them or die.

I agree that it'll become a T20 comp within the next few years, so I would personally move the Blast to August/September and run them alongside each other, then play 50 over cricket in April/May and the County Champ May/June/July/September. The Blast is now degraded beyond repair so I'd have every cricketer in the country playing T20 at the same time. It won't affect ticket sales as bad as people think being played alongside the 100, it's still prime summertime.

[nat]

Playing the circus and the Blast at the same time - it ain't gonna happen. Too much money at stake/to be made.

Good point about why the circus is worth so much more money than established counties. I/we still don't know exactly what has been sold. The buyers may be clowns but they're not fools I think. They won't have spent ?500m out of the goodness of their hearts.

The true value is in TV rights and real estate. If they have bought TV rights for an exclusive part of our Summer then that means the ECB/counties will have lost some TV revenue.

Have the clowns also bought a share or all of some cricket grounds? Lords is worth a fortune, The Oval similarly. Bristol and Chelmsford too on a much smaller scale.

Something smells very fishy and I'm not talking about my socks.

[bobw]

I think these sales are part of a larger project to have the IPL run around the world all year. They will sign up a few more franchises is other countries and then have 12 month contracts for players.

[SirChef26]

The true value is in TV rights and real estate. If they have bought TV rights for an exclusive part of our Summer then that means the ECB/counties will have lost some TV revenue.

Have the clowns also bought a share or all of some cricket grounds? Lords is worth a fortune, The Oval similarly. Bristol and Chelmsford too on a much smaller scale.

Something smells very fishy and I'm not talking about my socks.

Correct, TV rights have been bought, I believe all eight franchises get 10% and the ECB 20%. They will back themselves with all their business acumen to grow the tournament sufficiently enough across the next few years that come the next round of TV rights, they will get a huge increase, especially in India and that will be their route to making money.

I can understand the Lords bid. Indians are mental on cricket plus tradition and these people are genuine billionaires. So paying a couple of hundred million to essentially swan around Lords like you run the place is probably worth it to them. The people that have spunked mega money on the likes of the Welsh and Leeds teams, its them who have more money than sense.

[Cartero]

Simon Wilde's article in last week's Sunday Times quotes Graves as confirming it's all about the TV rights and that the franchises will benefit directly from them, but also queries whether if the rights to this and similar tournaments will become so valuable, whether TV companies will still be prepared to pay so much for rights to bilateral international cricket or ICC tournaments. If so the ECB's income going forward will reduce and so will it's payouts to counties. He concludes by asking if the ?20-25 million to the likes of Essex is really a golden handshake?

At least Elon Musk doesn't seem to have bought a franchise yet......

[bwildered]

 A cartel cricket circus, played 24/7 around the world.
 But these players have to come from somewhere to have developed their skills !

[Andy]

Looking at the big picture, we see other sports go through periods where other parties move in and try to develop more lucrative alternatives, especially where existing bosses have under exploited financial opportunities. 

However, in the same way Packer was welcomed by the ACB, and the cricketing world did not collapse it will be that the county system has to change?we would all agree that the likes of the ECB have made a hamfisted job over recent decades, that the game would die out anyway. It would be sad to see counties go to the wall, but they were not doing a great job in an era where the game lost interest in the U.K. anyway.

[NotAMember]

I agree that it'll become a T20 comp within the next few years, so I would personally move the Blast to August/September and run them alongside each other, then play 50 over cricket in April/May and the County Champ May/June/July/September. The Blast is now degraded beyond repair so I'd have every cricketer in the country playing T20 at the same time. It won't affect ticket sales as bad as people think being played alongside the 100, it's still prime summertime.

While this makes a huge amount of sense, I can't see how it would work as things stand.

For the likes of Essex, Northants, yes, but what about the Hundred host counties?

As far as I can see the public that goes to watch Surrey T20 and Oval Invincibles Hundred is largely one and the same, at least if you produced a Venn diagram there would be huge overlap, Oval Invincibles haven't found 20,000 new spectators out of thin air.

So it would not work with a Surrey Blast game on the Thursday and an Oval Invincibles game on the Friday.

This could only work if the Hundred host clubs closed down with their T20 sides, leaving the non-hosts to play alongside The Hundred.

The other problem is the paymaster Sky, at the moment the Blast is a nice airtime filler for them on evenings through June-July, they would not want it squashed in with The Hundred.

[nat]

Look it's simple.

The circus will become the 'premier league' of T20 cricket in the UK with the county competition relegated to semi-pro/second best/an afterthought.

Then, the circus will look to become the premier 4-day competition in the UK with the counties becoming semi-pro, like the National Counties are now.

This has always been the plan. I and others flagged it several years ago and tried to mobilise opposition. Greed won out in this case as always.

[SirChef26]

I agree that it'll become a T20 comp within the next few years, so I would personally move the Blast to August/September and run them alongside each other, then play 50 over cricket in April/May and the County Champ May/June/July/September. The Blast is now degraded beyond repair so I'd have every cricketer in the country playing T20 at the same time. It won't affect ticket sales as bad as people think being played alongside the 100, it's still prime summertime.

While this makes a huge amount of sense, I can't see how it would work as things stand.

For the likes of Essex, Northants, yes, but what about the Hundred host counties?

As far as I can see the public that goes to watch Surrey T20 and Oval Invincibles Hundred is largely one and the same, at least if you produced a Venn diagram there would be huge overlap, Oval Invincibles haven't found 20,000 new spectators out of thin air.

So it would not work with a Surrey Blast game on the Thursday and an Oval Invincibles game on the Friday.

This could only work if the Hundred host clubs closed down with their T20 sides, leaving the non-hosts to play alongside The Hundred.

The other problem is the paymaster Sky, at the moment the Blast is a nice airtime filler for them on evenings through June-July, they would not want it squashed in with The Hundred.

I honestly don't think the host counties would care. All their money and ambitions are tied into the 100, they'd have no issue playing Blast games out with their reserve teams at Guildford/Scarborough etc, where they'd be well supported no doubt and lauded for "taking the game around the county". Plus, they only play four 100 home games (as it stands), so I'm sure the calendar could be tweaked as appropriate. For example, schedule a significant portion of their home Blast games in early September once the 100 is finished.

As for Sky, they've been cutting down on live Blast games both in terms of volume and quality of broadcast. They broadcast all England Women's games now and apart from the big games like the Roses/London derby and finals day, all televised Blast games now operate with a limited camara crew and no on-site commentators. I bet they'd have no problem with it, they would just pick it up in September after the 100 is done.

All this is just sticking plaster stuff anyway as Nat's prediction is right. That's why Essex's only ambition from now on needs to be joining that group before they break away.