A £520m windfall that splits cricket | MJBurrows Sport - Issue No 5

Sport keeps being repriced as an asset: cricket's £520m windfall is splitting the counties, and football's fallen giants are being bought for their history at a discount.

English cricket's biggest-ever payday is quietly dividing the game it was meant to save. The £520m raised from selling eight stakes in the Hundred has wiped debts across the counties — London Spirit alone went for over £140m, each franchise for upwards of £40m — yet Leonard Curtis's finance report finds the gap between the seven host counties and the other eleven widening, not closing. The big four of Surrey, Lancashire, Hampshire and Warwickshire booked more than half the revenue of all eighteen first-class counties last year; non-host Gloucestershire banked about £400,000 from the sell-off. The hosts now have a revenue engine bolted on; the rest have a one-off cheque. That is a restructuring, not a rescue.

Football, meanwhile, is buying its fallen aristocrats. A.Gain, co-owners of Premier League Leeds, have taken a majority stake in Real Zaragoza — a Copa del Rey winner as recently as 2004, dropped last season into Spain's third tier for the first time since 1949. Distress is the appeal: a famous name and a loyal support at a knockdown price, folded into a portfolio that already runs from Leeds to a Colombian club to a slice of Atletico Madrid. Zaragoza is not alone in drawing money — Cristiano Ronaldo owns a quarter of Almeria, Messi and Pique have bought lower down the leagues, and Ander Herrera and Inter Miami's Jorge Mas already hold 40% of Zaragoza itself. The multi-club fund has come for Spain.

Cricket franchise or fallen club, sport is being carved into holdings — and the upside rarely lands where the history sits.

£520m windfall should have rescued county cricket. Instead, it is quietly building a wall down the middle of the game. The Hundred windfall — cash from selling stakes in eight franchises — has let counties bury their debts, yet it is pulling the sport’s haves and have-nots further apart. Leonard Curtis’ Cricket Finance Report puts the split in black and white, and the seven host counties are the ones pocketing the real money.

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Real Zaragoza have not played in Spain’s third tier since 1949. Yet the co-owners of a Premier League club, a former Manchester United star and the money behind Inter Miami are all circling the fallen giant. In the new world of multi-club ownership, a relegated club with a proud history is not a problem, it is a bargain. A.Gain, the group that co-owns Leeds United, has bought a majority stake in Zaragoza.

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English cricket found a fortune and somehow came out more divided than before, while a club last seen this low in 1949 is suddenly the one everyone wants. Money rarely lands where the romance is. — MJB

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