County cricket can learn from rugby's private-equity experience, says new financial report

County cricket will face "tensions" as it seeks to manage the £520 million windfall that it is due from this year's sale of stakes in the Hundred. However, it is well placed to avoid the pitfalls that Premiership rugby faced following its own injection of private equity capital in 2018, according to a new in-depth report into the financial health of the domestic game in England and Wales.

The Leonard Curtis Cricket Finance Report, an 89-page study compiled by a team of sports business journalists, former and current cricket professionals, advisers and sports finance academics, was launched at the Kia Oval on Tuesday.

Within it, the report described a "yawning gap" between the seven counties that host a Hundred franchise and the 11 that do not, with three clubs - Surrey, Warwickshire and Lancashire, all of whom hosted Ashes Tests in 2023 - responsible for 44% of the £306.1 million generated by domestic cricket that year. By contrast, the three poorest clubs - Leicestershire, Derbyshire and Northamptonshire - contributed just 5.56% between them.

Professor Rob Wilson, the report's co-author, acknowledged that, without the anticipated Hundred money, "three or four" counties might by now be facing bankruptcy. However, he was also broadly optimistic that the windfall could provide the "medium-term relief" necessary to shore up the county game's long-term viability.

"English cricket really is on the cusp of a transformational injection of capital," Wilson said. "That represents an extraordinary opportunity for the game. But it has to be managed with real prudence, long-term thinking and probably a degree of creativity."

Michael Vaughan, the former England captain who wrote the report's foreword, added that the Hundred money will allow the 18 first-class counties to "look to the future rather than simply survive from one summer to the next" and called on the smaller counties to invest in player pathways and facilities to generate homegrown talent, rather than seek to compete directly with the bigger clubs.

"There needs to be a strategic plan of how to create a sustainable county cricket club," Vaughan added. "I would like to see counties being transparent with each other and sharing knowledge about what works for them. Sometimes petty rivalries prevent that from happening and divisions between the Test host counties and the others develop."

The contrast with rugby's experience of private investment is potentially instructive for English cricket. In 2024, Leonard Curtis compiled a similar report on that sport's finances, six years on from CVC Capital Partners' groundbreaking £200 million deal for a 27% stake in Premiership Rugby.

The rugby report found that not a single club made a profit in the 2022-23 season, with seven of the ten clubs considered to be balance-sheet insolvent. "Old-school thinking", it added, had contributed to three teams - Wasps, Worcester Warriors and London Irish - going out of business in the preceding seasons.

"The ECB has a lot more control over the distribution of that Hundred money than we saw with the CVC deal in rugby union," Wilson explained. "That money went to the clubs, then straight into player wages, and there was no real improvement in infrastructure.

"In cricket, I think it will be much more akin to what we see in American sport, which is ownerships working together for the benefit of the competition, rather than owners against each other for the benefit of the club. Over time, that will mean the franchise values increase, and that then provides a lot more financial resources for the counties that sit beneath them."

However, the authors did acknowledge that the wide range of stakeholders in the Hundred could create separate pressures on county cricket. In addition to multiple investors from India and America, including owners of IPL and MLC teams, almost a third of the Hundred windfall was generated from outside the county system, with a US tech consortium bidding £144 million for a 49% stake in MCC-owned London Spirit.

"It certainly creates increased tension, because of the range of different opportunities that the various bodies will be looking to capitalise on," Wilson added.

"With the BCCI investing fairly heavily through the IPL franchise system, that gives them the opportunity to get into the grassroots, and dominate the game at a franchise level, which could then have a tangible impact on the county game.

"I'm encouraged that the ECB are regulating how that money will be distributed, so that it goes into the right areas to protect the fabric of the game. But there will be some significant tensions in making sure we can deliver an optimized franchise competition, alongside an 18-county first-class system."