About 100 interested parties received investment catalogs from the England & Wales Cricket Board in September. In order to purchase a stake in one of the eight members of The Hundred, initial interested had to register by October 18. After the sale process is finished, the ECB, which presently owns the teams, plans to form joint partnerships with the Marylebone Cricket Club or host counties.
As of present now, the overcast broadcast rights are valued at £2 million annually. According to Deloitte and the Raine Group reports, the rights are expected to be worth £33 million by 2030. The exaggerated amount was not entirely justified in the eyes of a potential investor.
“It seems like they first thought of a valuation and then made up the numbers to justify it – things like the sudden and exponential growth in broadcast revenue from India and North America,” the shareholder was reported as saying.
Richard Gould, the CEO of the European Central Bank, defended the figures and appeared optimistic about the time frame for The Hundred and the group of players available.
We are not assuming that the men’s players from India will be freed because that hasn’t happened. Regarding the window we occupy and the players we have available, we are confident in our product. In all honesty, I don’t think that all of the T20 and short-format franchise tournaments that are currently available will endure,” Gould said.
Underselling the game would be the worst thing we could do: Gould
Even while Gould found the prospect fascinating, he knew he shouldn’t sell the franchises too quickly or for less than their prospective worth.
“We don’t want to feel pressured to sell them all and then realize that we could have gotten a lot more if we had held back because that specific team wasn’t prepared to go.” Underselling the game and later thinking, ‘We let some of these franchises go at prices that weren’t full market value,’ would be the worst thing we could do,” Gould continued.
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Vikram Banerjee, the ECB’s Director of Business Operations, had issued a warning last month that if the correct offers did not come through, the sale process would be delayed.
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