Sundar Pichai, Satya Nadella to Ambani: Who owns what in The Hundred sale

It has been an eventful first week of The Hundred Sale in English cricket. Four of the eight teams have been valued and sold, with the majority stake retained by their respective counties except in the case of London Spirit, the majority stake of which was gifted to cricket’s oldest governing body and the owner of the Lord’s Cricket Ground—the Marylebone Cricket Club.

Here’s what happened at the bids and who acquired what.

London Sprit

London Spirit are the highest-valued entity in the Hundred so far. They were valued at 295 million Great Britain pounds (GBP). Courtesy of this, The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has already received 145 million GBP. The team’s minority stake was bought by a consortium of tech giants called the Cricket Investor Holdings Limited.

It is led by Nikesh Arora and has on its board giants such as Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Times Internet vice-chairman and founder of the Major League Cricket (MLC) Satyan Gajwani, and seven others.

The consortium outbid Sanjiv Goenka group, a Kolkata-based Industrialist who owns the Lucknow Super Giants in the Indian Premier League (IPL) and Durban Super Giants in the SA20 League.

Welsh Fire

Washington Freedom owner Sanjay Govil will now hold a 49 per cent stake in Welsh Fire while 51 per cent will be with County side Glamorgan. The team was valued at around 66 million GBP, and Govil will have to shell 33 million for ECB. Capri Global, the owner of the UP Warriorz, a Women’s Premier League (WPL) side, were also in the race but were outbid by the Freedom owners.

Oval Invincibles

Another London-based team, the Invincibles, was valued at 123 million GBP, and a minority stake was bought by the Reliance group led by Mukesh Ambani, who also owns the Mumbai Indians in the Indian Premier League (IPL). The Reliance group paid around 60 million GBP.

They outbid the likes of CVC Capital, the owners of the Gujarat Titans in the IPL, as the Cricket Investor Holdings Limited, which eventually went on to acquire the London Spirit.

Birmingham Phoenix

The Phoenix were acquired by Knighthead Capital, a New York-based investment advisor firm that also owns the Birmingham City football club from the same city that the Phoenix represent. Once again, the majority stake would be held by Warwickshire county.

Knighthead beat CVC Capital, valuing the Phoenix at about 80 million GBP. The ECB will get 40 million GBP from that sale.

How much more could the ECB get?

ECB hoped to raise GBP 350 million through privatisation of The Hundred. However, with the sale of only four teams, they have managed to get the valuation of The Hundred to 564 million GBP already, out of which they will be getting at least 282 million.

With four more teams–Manchester Originals, Northern Superchargers, Trent Rockets and Southern Brave yet to be sold, at least 400 million is expected to be raised. This would mean that the ECB alone would get around 450 to 500 million GBP.

The next set of biddings for the rest of the four teams will be held next week i.e. from February 3rd onwards.