Big Bash League set for split as states reject Hundred-style sell-off
Cricket Australia will explore a partial sell-off of the Big Bash League after objections from some states forced it to shelve plans to seek investors in all eight teams.
Queensland Cricket joined NSW Cricket in opposing proposals to copy the England and Wales Cricket Board’s sale of 49 per cent stakes in The Hundred franchises.
Cricket Australia chief executive Todd Greenberg said he would now pursue a model which allowed some BBL teams to accept private investment while others continue to consider their options.
“Option A for us has always been that we do it at the same time to extract the maximum value in the market, but clearly we’re not at that point, so we now have to reassess what comes next,” he said.
“We’ve just moved to trying to analyse what a different model might look like, and is there a model where some states are taking private capital and some states aren’t?
“We would have to get some deep analysis to understand the impacts on Australian cricket. Because, to do this, it needs to benefit the entire sport, and we have to look at that lens in the decisions that we make.”
How Hundred changed game for T20 leagues
The ECB’s sell-off of The Hundred allowed US and Indian investors to take mostly minority stakes in the teams and raised more than £500m for English cricket.
The process, run by Deloitte and the Raine Group, was sufficiently successful for Cricket Australia to seek to emulate it but its pivot to a partial sell-off means it is now set to follow the example of South Africa’s SA20.
New investors in The Hundred have led to a relaxing of salary rules, meaning big pay bumps for star players in a move designed to make it the second best T20 franchise competition after the Indian Premier League.
That has also raised the stakes for the likes of the SA20, BBL, Pakistan Super League and US Major League Cricket.