The leader of the Tech Titans consortium that has bought 49% of London Spirit believes the Hundred will become a multibillion-dollar competition to rival the Indian Premier League.
Nikesh Arora, the chief executive of the American cybersecurity company Palo Alto, was at Lord’s on Tuesday for the first two games in this season’s competitions, as the women and men of London Spirit took on their Oval Invincibles counterparts. He was joined by 15 other members of the Silicon Valley-based group, which includes the chief executives of Google, Microsoft and YouTube.
The Titans stunned the sports investment world in January by agreeing to pay £145m for their London Spirit stake, giving by far the highest valuation for one of the eight Hundred franchises sold off by the England and Wales Cricket Board in a remarkable auction that has raised £520m to be reinvested in domestic cricket.
Marylebone Cricket Club were given the other 51% by the ECB and face the task of setting up professional teams for the first time in the august institution’s 238-year history, a challenge that the MCC’s chief operating officer, Rob Lynch, describes as “extremely exciting”.
Unsurprisingly their new partners are not daunted, either. Sitting high up in the Nursery End, Arora said they have never had buyer’s remorse and revealed that more investors have joined the consortium.
While the Hundred has moved beyond Australia’s Big Bash League, which is now considering selling stakes, the IPL remains in a universe of its own with a total valuation of £14bn. Gujarat Titans sold a 67% stake this year in a deal that valued the franchise at £975m.
“The IPL started from nowhere, and became a multibillion-dollar product,” Arora said. “Why couldn’t this be that product? There are eight new shareholders across eight new franchises. They all have successful businesses or cricket operations somewhere in the world.
“If that energy, that passion, that creativity, that innovation is brought to this, imagine what they could do. The ECB incubated the Hundred, which is great, but I’m sure there are ways to optimise things.
“We have never had buyer’s remorse. We’ve never been stressed about what we paid. I have more people who want to be part of the consortium now than I had before I made the investment.”
Given Hundred franchises have just four home fixtures each season, do not own their grounds and have a domestic TV contract with Sky Sports that is valued at about £35m a year, other sports investors are intrigued about how the new co-owners plan to recoup their outlay.
While the Titans have already been using their contacts to drive commercial growth – a kit deal with Nike for next season is understood to have been agreed and a huge push on digital content is planned – Arora claims the initial focus will be on improving the on-field product. The top pay bracket in the men’s competition has been increased from £125,000 to £200,000 this year to attract stars such as Warner and his Spirit teammate Kane Williamson, and the aspiration is to raise it to about £500,000 in the years ahead.
“In our world we don’t talk about money, we talk about product,” Arora said. “We ask: ‘How can a tech company build a great product that eventually people want?’ and when a lot of people want it, they will make money.
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“I worked at Google for 10 years, and the chief executive [Sundar Pichai] is here tonight. We never talked about how much money we could make. We said: ‘Oh my God, wouldn’t it be cool if you could take your phone out, and it’d just tell you how to get from one place to the other, and it’d give you directions?’ It’s called Google Maps now.
“Pretty much everyone uses it and would not know how to get from point A to point B without it. But we never started by saying: ‘How much money can we make?’ We said: ‘How can we make this an amazing product that people want to engage with?’”
Satyan Gajwani, one of Arora’s key partners and a co-founder of Major League Cricket in the US, is convinced future growth will come primarily from a UK audience despite the multinational makeup of the investment groups. In practical terms this will lead to significant increases in what are now low ticket prices, but there will also be innovations in broadcast deals and digital products.
“Whether it’s MLC in the US or the Hundred here – the IPL may be a little bit different – I think it starts with a strong domestic product,” Gajwani said. “If we’re selling out stadiums and people are excited to watch it, that’s the major driver. And then the bleed-on effect around the world will happen.
“Bringing in stakeholders beyond governing bodies has almost always improved product. We’ve got eight best-in-class investors, people who understand business, consumers and sport, globally and locally.
“And relative to almost every other sport, cricket has less private power, for lack of a better term. The NBA is run privately, the NFL is private, La Liga, the Premier League are private businesses. The influx of diverse views, different stakeholders, will bring innovation.”
