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.<\/p>\n
Nikesh Arora, the chief executive of the American cybersecurity company Palo Alto, was at Lord\u2019s on Tuesday for the first two games in this season\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The Titans stunned the sports investment world in January by agreeing to pay \u00a3145m 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<\/a> Board in a remarkable auction that has raised \u00a3520m to be reinvested in domestic cricket.<\/p>\n Marylebone Cricket Club were given the other 51% by the ECB<\/a> and face the task of setting up professional teams for the first time in the august institution\u2019s 238-year history, a challenge that the MCC\u2019s chief operating officer, Rob Lynch, describes as \u201cextremely exciting\u201d.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly their new partners are not daunted, either. Sitting high up in the Nursery End, Arora said they have never had buyer\u2019s remorse and revealed that more investors have joined the consortium.<\/p>\n While the Hundred has moved beyond Australia\u2019s Big Bash League, which is now considering selling stakes, the IPL<\/a> remains in a universe of its own with a total valuation of \u00a314bn. Gujarat Titans sold a 67% stake this year in a deal that valued the franchise at \u00a3975m.<\/p>\n \u201cThe IPL started from nowhere, and became a multibillion-dollar product,\u201d Arora said. \u201cWhy couldn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIf 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\u2019m sure there are ways to optimise things.<\/p>\n \u201cWe have never had buyer\u2019s remorse. We\u2019ve 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.\u201d<\/p>\n London Spirit players celebrate taking the wicket of Will Jacks during the Hundred match against Oval Invincibles. Photograph: Keeran Marquis\/SPP\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n 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 \u00a335m a year, other sports investors are intrigued about how the new co-owners plan to recoup their outlay.<\/p>\n While the Titans have already been using their contacts to drive commercial growth \u2013 a kit deal with Nike for next season is understood to have been agreed and a huge push on digital content is planned \u2013 Arora claims the initial focus will be on improving the on-field product. The top pay bracket in the men\u2019s competition has been increased from \u00a3125,000 to \u00a3200,000 this year to attract stars such as Warner and his Spirit teammate Kane Williamson, and the aspiration is to raise it to about \u00a3500,000 in the years ahead.<\/p>\n \u201cIn our world we don\u2019t talk about money, we talk about product,\u201d Arora said. \u201cWe ask: \u2018How can a tech company build a great product that eventually people want?\u2019 and when a lot of people want it, they will make money.<\/p>\n skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to our cricket newsletter for our writers’ thoughts on the biggest stories and a review of the week\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n \u201cI 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: \u2018Oh my God, wouldn\u2019t it be cool if you could take your phone out, and it\u2019d just tell you how to get from one place to the other, and it\u2019d give you directions?\u2019 It\u2019s called Google Maps now.<\/p>\n \u201cPretty 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: \u2018How much money can we make?\u2019 We said: \u2018How can we make this an amazing product that people want to engage with?\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Satyan Gajwani, one of Arora\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n \u201cWhether it\u2019s MLC in the US or the Hundred here \u2013 the IPL may be a little bit different \u2013 I think it starts with a strong domestic product,\u201d Gajwani said. \u201cIf we\u2019re selling out stadiums and people are excited to watch it, that\u2019s the major driver. And then the bleed-on effect around the world will happen.<\/p>\n \u201cBringing in stakeholders beyond governing bodies has almost always improved product. We\u2019ve got eight best-in-class investors, people who understand business, consumers and sport, globally and locally.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The leader of the Tech Titans consortium that has bought 49% of London Spirit believes the Hundred will…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":50065,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[564],"tags":[64,63,740,85],"class_list":["post-50064","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cricket","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50064","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=50064"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50064\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50065"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50064"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50064"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50064"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}