Cricket Australia would not oppose BBL clubs changing their names or colours if sold in a privatisation process, but say mass rebranding is unlikely<\/p>\n
Todd Greenberg has flagged it is possible some Big Bash team names and colours could change if the league is privatised, but insists a mass overhaul of club branding is unlikely.<\/p>\n
Cricket Australia bosses met with state associations on Wednesday in Adelaide, with the sale of clubs the chief talking point.<\/p>\n
As things stand, CA and the states have agreed to pursue the opportunity for privatisation, with an eye to move quickly and be close to a decision in early 2026.<\/p>\n
The eight BBL clubs are owned by CA but are effectively leased out to the states with licensing agreements that last another 15 years.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
If privatisation went ahead with state agreement, CA would sell a 49 per cent stake of the teams and hand the states equity, ensuring a significant financial windfall for the game.<\/p>\n
That stake is similar to the one sold in most Hundred clubs in England this year.<\/p>\n
Following that, the Oval Invincibles will be rebranded as MI London next year, and Northern Superchargers as Sunrisers Leeds, to align with their IPL club owners.<\/p>\n
Greenberg said it would be up to each BBL franchise to decide if they were open to changing their name in a terms-of-sale agreement, but did not foresee widespread rebranding.<\/p>\n
“Personally, I don’t think it’ll get to that, because I think there’s a big difference here. The BBL’s been around 15 years, and these brands are valuable,” Greenberg said.<\/p>\n
“They’re well understood by the community. They’ve got big fandom. That’s different to The Hundred. They’ve only been around a couple of years.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“You might see that in one or two, I don’t know. But I think when people come in and look at the valuations, they’re going to look at the value of the brands.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“And I think they’ll want to invest in the brands rather than maybe bring their own.”<\/p>\n
AAP understands it is also unlikely CA would want all eight franchises to be sold to overseas franchise owners, with diversification the preferred option.<\/p>\n
Greenberg’s comments come as the CA boss revealed his organisation lost about $5 million in profits with the Perth Test finishing in two days.<\/p>\n
Unlike days ruined by weather, CA is not insured against Test matches finishing early.<\/p>\n
This summer has loomed as crucial for the sport’s finances, after CA announced an $11.3 million loss for last financial year, which included hosting India in five Tests.<\/p>\n
Greenberg said the main question from the states had been what the sport would do with the money if the BBL was to be privatised.<\/p>\n
Some of the funds would be distributed back to the states, with that figure up for discussion.<\/p>\n
The veteran administrator indicated the cash would not be spent or used to purchase assets, but rather left to accrue interest until at least the next broadcast deal in 2031.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“My (thinking) is that we would create some sort of future fund to protect those investments (rather than) spend them,” he said.<\/p>\n
“We hold them, generate revenue … and have an agreement with everyone that nothing would be touched until such time as we do a new media deal in 2031, so it’s effectively diversifying our revenues and putting us into a position of strength.”<\/p>\n
Greenberg also confirmed that Pakistan players would remain for the entire BBL competition, despite the nation being due to play Sri Lanka in a T20 series in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Cricket Australia would not oppose BBL clubs changing their names or colours if sold in a privatisation process,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85,83],"class_list":{"0":"post-354687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-cricket","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-cricket","11":"tag-sports","12":"tag-text"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=354687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/354687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=354687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=354687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=354687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}