by It wasn’t that long ago that Surrey were serious skeptics of The Hundred, worried about how the competition would affect the running of their successful business.
Now with control of the tournament shifting away from the England & Wales Cricket Board and more back towards the hosts, Surrey can see the potential for growth.
Under new plans being discussed, the eight host clubs will be given a 50 per cent equity stake in their franchise, giving them a golden windfall that threatens to widen the gap between the Test grounds and the smaller clubs. They will be able to raise income by selling their shares to private investors if they wish. If the ECB sells its equity, the money will be spread throughout the entire game.
For Surrey this is a huge windfall opportunity because of the Oval’s historic name but the chairman, Oli Slipper, has a different vision. Surrey are lucky because of their £60 million turnover, which puts them in financial terms alongside Premier League clubs like Aston Villa, minus the income from the Premier League’s huge TV rights deals. This eliminates the need to quickly raise income by selling their equity. Instead, the idea is to make the Oval’s Hundred team more recognisably Surrey. The Invincibles Oval could be the Surrey Invincibles.
At 47, Slipper is young for a county chair. Appointed last October, he took over from Richard Thompson when he left for the ECB. A former Surrey team player who played second team cricket with Ben Hollioake, he is an Oval man through and through but in business he is well aware of the challenges of the game. He is executive chairman of Pitch International, a media rights company that buys and sells broadcast deals across cricket and other sports, acting for six of the 12 Test-playing nations. He understands the challenges faced by bilateral one-day and Test cricket from the franchise leagues.
“The Hundred is an integral part of the domestic television market, which is the main funder of cricket so The Hundred is here to stay. We have to accept it,” he tells Telegraph Sport. “The First cannot stand still. We need to make sure it has the best players, the best budgets and that this is the ultimate event for cricket in this country.
“There are some things I want to do. The teams are currently 100 percent owned by the ECB. A degree of ownership is to be returned to the centres. That is very important to us at Surrey. We can then feel that it is our team. From a brand perspective, hopefully we can brand it as a team with Surrey branding and part of our cricket ecosystem. We sold 125,000 Hundred tickets last summer but I want the whole membership to get behind it. If we can make some small changes to the ownership branding, this can be a really important product for Surrey, not just for the game as a whole.”
As revealed by Telegraph Sport this week, the Céad is to expand to 10 teams in the future. There were meetings last week between the ECB and the counties to discuss the latest proposals, and Deloitte estimates that the value of the competition will be around £750 million if the ECB decides to sell equity, the next stage of their planned development.
“The game needs capital. Some counties need investment. We’re luckier than most that we don’t need short-term money at the moment,” says Slipper. “We may be of the opinion that we can fund the salaries to take the First team to the next level and so if investment is required it will come from the ECB’s equity in these franchises or from other counties that may need some capital in the short term.
“If you sell your 50 percent you are giving up your future annuities. You then give up income streams forever. For me, look at the challenges of Premiership Rugby. They sold large commitments to private equity who then had first claim on that income before the clubs themselves. I’m not against the investment but I think we would take a narrow view if we need it at the moment but maybe other clubs need some funding for the stadium and selling their equity gives them an opportunity for more capital to raise without taking on more debt.
“There is general agreement that 10 teams makes sense. I don’t think it will affect the quality of the product on the field. I don’t think we’ll get to 10 very quickly. I think there will be a quality period. Then there is the question of relegation or promotion as the idea that the whole game will be played on the first of that August.”
Slipper is referring to the ECB’s plan to launch a second division of the First, with the bottom eight of the main division playing the format in August with the possibility of promotion and relegation in the future. “It is up to the game to decide promotion and relegation or until we know the difference in value between a closed group and an open group. The game needs to see more detail on what it means for the values, we’re waiting for that,” said Slipper.
He knows from his work with Pitch that bilateral cricket faces challenges, and the ECB, like all other boards, needs a back-up plan. “Franchise cricket is growing. I’m still a big believer in bilateral cricket but we have to make it as relevant as possible. Certainly from a Test perspective, there are only 4-5 very viable Test nations left in the world. The remainder will require some funding mechanism to ensure they continue to play and drive Test cricket forward.”
Slipper will be speaking before Surrey hosts a dinner for staff and players to celebrate winning a second consecutive county championship. With a membership of up to 19,500, and many signing up for Test tickets and championship cricket, the red ball game remains the focus of the club. “Many people forget that Test cricket has long been the ECB’s biggest revenue generator. Test cricket is not 100 per cent without the County Championship. We have to make sure that the champion is a vibrant product. We have had great commercial success over the past few years. It is part of our business model and drives the Test cricket program which is so important to the economics of cricket in England and Wales.”
