Cricket’s next big bang theory

In January 1994, the Buffalo Bills lost their fourth consecutive Super Bowl. The team has not made it to the NFL’s biggest game since.

But for Terry and Kim Pegula, who have owned the Bills since 2014, the long wait for a trophy could end today. Their daughter Jessica, born a month after the Bills’ last Super Bowl appearance, is into her first Grand Slam final, facing Aryna Sabalenka at the US Open tonight.

Victory would push Pegula up to third in the global rankings, and deliver a $3.6mn payday. Sabalenka, who lost last year’s US Open final to Coco Gauff, will hope to add to her two Grand Slam titles.

It could have been an all American billionaire family final had Emma Navarro made it past Sabalenka in Thursday night’s semi final. Navarro’s father Ben is the founder of Sherman Financial, which owns Credit One Bank. The Navarros and the Pegulas have a combined net worth of more than $9bn, according to Forbes.

This week we’re looking at English cricket’s big push to raise money by selling teams in The Hundred, and the latest twist in the long-running saga that is the Premier League’s efforts to crackdown on overspending. Do read on — Josh Noble, sports editor

The Hundred kicks off stake sale process

Not everyone loves The Hundred — English’s cricket snazzy young short-form competition. Since launching four years ago, the tournament has come in for plenty of stick. Purists complain The Hundred has cannibalised “proper” cricket, dragging top players away from test matches in order to swing bats for confected teams in front of an audience of kids and casual fans.

Of course, that is the point. The Hundred was set up in large part to help build a on-ramp for new cricket fans through a short, exciting and easy to understand competition that was over and done in under three hours.

Now The Hundred is set to test interest among professional investors. On Friday, the England and Wales Cricket Board, which owns the competition, formally kicked off an auction process for the eight team franchises.

The ECB has ambitious targets — it hopes to raise as much as £500mn by selling a 49 per cent stake in each of the teams, according to those involved. That implies an average team valuation of at least £100mn — although the two London franchises are expected to fetch a lot more interest than some of their rivals.

Those targets are based on bullish projections about revenue growth, as laid out by the ECB’s pitch deck seen by Scoreboard. The Hundred’s most recent UK TV deal was worth £38mn a year, but the ECB believes it will jump to around £85mn a year when it renegotiates for the 2029-2032 cycle.

Internationally the ECB sees huge room for growth. The Hundred currently generates almost nothing from overseas, with a contract to show the matches in India until 2028 worth just £1.8mn a year. Once that expires, those behind The Hundred believe it could bring in more than £20mn a year from outside the UK, rising to £35mn by 2032.

Even with such rapid growth, The Hundred would still fall well short of the more than $1.1bn a year that the Indian Premier League currently rakes in.

But English cricket isn’t a battle for supremacy, it’s in a tight race for second place. The money brought in from the stake sales will be parcelled out to cash-strapped country cricket clubs, allowing them to pay off debts and invest in new revenue streams. It will also bolster recreational cricket.

For The Hundred itself, the hope is that the arrival of wealthy new investors, whether that’s US private equity, NFL team owners or IPL franchises, will open the door to a sharp increase in player salaries. In the men’s game, The Hundred currently gets outbid by SA20, the South African T20 tournament, Australia’s Big Bash League, and ILT20 in the United Arab Emirates. The plan is to leapfrog all three into the second spot from next year, with the salary pool mandated by the organisers set to double.

This rosy scenario is, of course, a sales pitch. There are plenty of reasons to be doubtful. Drumming up interest from overseas will be dependent on attracting must-watch global talent to the contest. India’s cricket authorities, which control top player contracts, may see little reason to bolster a rival. The Hundred format is an outlier — the T20 format favoured elsewhere — so there may be increased pressure to fall into line. The potential for bidders to battle over a couple of hot properties and turn their noses up at the rest could leave the ECB in a very awkward position.

And there is a fundamental contradiction with The Hundred — it is a tournament aimed at people who are new to cricket, but the investment case hinges on tapping the huge existing fan base.

Whether investors buy the hype will become clearer in a few weeks — formal bids are due by Christmas.

Leicester delivers another blow to Premier League

If it wasn’t already clear that the Premier League’s regulatory framework was fraying, this was the week the pressures on the system were laid bare.

Leicester City were charged by the league earlier this year for breaking spending rules. But the club, which was relegated from the top flight the season before, had shifted the end of its 2023 financial year from May to June.

Thus, the Leicester’s legal team were then able to argue successfully that the club was no longer under the Premier League’s jurisdiction at the time of the alleged breach.

The legal victory enabled Leicester, now back in the Premier League, to avoid the fate of other clubs deemed to have breached the league’s profit and sustainability rules, which cap allowable losses to £105mn over three seasons. Everton and Nottingham Forest were both docked points for PSR breaches, while Leicester City was cleared by an independent panel.

The Premier League said it was “surprised and disappointed” by the appeal board’s decision to rule in favour of Leicester.

Worse still, the ruling highlighted flaws in the way the Premier League’s rules were drafted. As England’s top tier trials two new financial regulatory systems this season, this raises the stakes for the way the next rule book is worded. So even if teams can broadly find agreement on a way forward, expect fierce wrangling over the details.

In another sign that money has changed the essence of football fandom, Leicester fans lined up on social media platform X to praise Nick De Marco KC for representing the club in the successful appeal. One even mocked up a “De Marco, No. 9” home shirt.

It’s not the first time football fans have celebrated a high-profile lawyer. Remember when Manchester City’s supporters unfurled a banner for Lord David Pannick KC? Yes, that’s right, the man defending the club against the Premier League’s 115 charges.

Such glorification is usually preserved for star strikers, but these days there’s no separating football from the professional services.

The rise of sport as an asset class, the arrival of big money investors and growing discontent with financial rules written over a decade ago mean that fans have a lot more to debate than refereeing decisions and their fantasy football picks. Who knew amortisation could be such a hot topic on the terraces?

Fans are increasingly likely to debate the merits of one club owner over another or whether financial regulations put their team at a disadvantage.

Which all adds up to one conclusion: lawyers and accountants are becoming the new stars of English football.

Highlights

• French booze group Pernod Ricard backed out of a new four-year deal with Paris Saint-Germain this week after a backlash from supporters of arch rival team Marseille. The debacle highlights the challenges that can spring up from globally minded partnerships that alienate local communities. Pernod Ricard’s anise-flavoured aperitif pastis is synonymous with the city of Marseille.

• NBA legend Earvin “Magic” Johnson has joined the investor group of women’s football team Washington Spirit, part of Michele Kang’s growing multiclub network that also includes Olympique Lyonnais Féminin and the London City Lionesses.

• Here’s a smart take on Chelsea FC’s transfer strategy over at ESPN.

Transfer Market

• Jason Gannon has been named the new chief operating officer and president of Chelsea Football Club after Chris Jurasek stepped down as chief executive. Jurasek, a longtime veteran of businesses owned by Chelsea’s biggest shareholder Clearlake Capital had been in the role for 15 months. Gannon’s previous roles include managing director of SoFi stadium in Los Angeles.

• Squire Patton Boggs partner Wayne Barnes, who refereed the 2023 Rugby World Cup final, has joined the board of the governing body for rugby union in England. Rugby Football Union said the barrister will start is three-year term immediately.

Final Whistle

India has big Olympic ambitions, but (beyond cricket) has a pretty poor record when it comes to sporting performance. At the Paralympics, which wraps up this weekend, the country has at least improved considerably on its 71st place finish in the Olympic medals table. With five golds, India is comfortably inside the top 20 nations.

Although she didn’t win a medal, one of India’s athletes became an online sensation this week: archer Sheetal Devi. The 17-year old was born without arms due a rare congenital condition, but went on to become the youngest person ever to compete in para archery in Paris. Here’s a clip that shows off her incredible technique.