Can The Hundred challenge the IPL? 6 potential key changes explained in new era for English cricket

2025 could well be remembered as the ‘end of the beginning’ for The Hundred. The ECB has announced that six of the eight franchise deals are now complete, with the remaining two deals “on track” for completion at a later date. While the funds will go into all parts of cricket in England and Wales, it’s clear that the influence of these new investors will see changes to The Hundred as we’ve known it since 2021, with ECB Chair Richard Thompson referring to “a complete reset” that could enable The Hundred to challenge the IPL.

Here, Matthew Cleary and Will Hardwick from our cricket sector team provide an overview of the deals, outline changes that can already be seen (such as the new Hundred Board) and highlight further developments that may follow.

Recap — the deals so far

To recap, the teams and investors for the deals that have completed so far are:

1. London Spirit (Tech Titans)

A consortium of Silicon Valley tech entrepreneurs has bought a 49% stake. Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) will retain 51%. This stake was valued at £145m.

2. Birmingham Phoenix (Knighthead Capital Management LLC)

A New York-based investment firm has bought a 49% stake. Warwickshire will retain 51%. This stake was valued at approximately £40m.

3. Manchester Originals (RPSG Group)

Sanjiv Goenka's conglomerate that runs the IPL’s Lucknow Super Giants and the SA20’s Durban’s Super Giants has bought a 70% stake. Lancashire will retain 30%. This stake was valued at approximately £81m.

4. Northern Superchargers (Sun TV Network Limited) 

The media conglomerate that owns the IPL’s Sunrisers Hyderabad and the SA20’s Sunrisers Eastern Cape has bought 100%. Yorkshire will not retain a financial interest. This deal was valued at just over £100m.

5. Southern Brave (GMR Group)

The Indian conglomerate that co-owns the IPL’s Delhi Capitals and Major League Cricket’s Seattle Orcas has bought a 49% stake. GMR is also taking over host county Hampshire.

6. Welsh Fire (Washington Freedom)

An Indian-American tech entrepreneur and the owner of Major League Cricket’s Washington Freedom has bought a 50% stake. Glamorgan will retain 50%. This stake was valued at £40m.

Upcoming deals

The remaining two deals to be completed are:

1. Oval Invincibles (Reliance Group)

The Mukesh Ambani-owned conglomerate that runs the IPL’s Mumbai Indians, Major League Cricket’s MI New York and the SA20’s MI Cape Town is buying a 49% stake. Surrey will retain 51%. This stake was valued at £60m.

2. Trent Rockets (Cain International & Area Management) 

Backed by Chelsea FC’s co-owner Todd Boehly and Ares Management Credit, these two private equity firms are jointly buying a 49% stake. Nottinghamshire will retain 51%. This stake was valued at just under £40m.

How will the investment be used?

We recently covered the impact that this investment will have on domestic cricket and the completed deals now mean that a large proportion of the £520m can be realised. 

• The ECB confirmed that 10% of its total sales from its 49% stakes in each Hundred franchise will be invested into recreational cricket.
• Proceeds up to £275m will be distributed equally to the 18 professional counties and the MCC.
• Between £275m and £425m will be distributed between the 11 non-host professional counties (Durham, Essex, Somerset, Sussex, Worcestershire, Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, Kent, Leicestershire, Middlesex and Northamptonshire).
• Proceeds over £425m will be distributed equally between the 18 professional counties and the MCC. 

Since only three franchises sold a portion of their own stake (Glamorgan, Lancashire and Yorkshire), the proceeds from those sales will be distributed as follows:

• 10% distribution to the grassroots game.
• 10% equally distributed across the 18 professional counties and MCC.
• The remaining 80% of the value to be retained by the host county.

Can The Hundred challenge the IPL?

With four of the eight deals being with investors who have a link to the IPL, it seems extremely likely that The Hundred will adopt aspects of what has made India’s top league a global success.

The IPL has some small differences to the Hundred. It’s played in the longer (but still short-form) of Twenty20 cricket and takes place over two months, compared to the Hundred’s one-month schedule. While it began with just eight teams, the IPL has since grown to ten. 

The IPL owes much of its success to the fact that cricket is India’s most popular sport. This naturally leads to massive TV audiences, including the most watched T20 game, ever, earlier this year, which saw 169m people tuning in to watch the RCB versus the Punjab Kings. With such large audiences, it has been no surprise that broadcasters have sought to get the IPL on their respective stations and pay for the privilege. The TV rights to broadcast the IPL between 2023 and 2027 was acquired for $3.02bn by Disney-owned Star India. This has meant that the IPL is even more lucrative on a per-game basis than the English Premier League, which is famous for providing huge sums to the twenty teams that compete each season. 

With IPL clubs receiving huge sums from broadcasting, it’s likely that the four new IPL owners and others will want to ensure that The Hundred is able to follow in its footsteps. One way to get more eyes on The Hundred would be for Indian players to play in the competition. However, this would require the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) to relax its rules on allowing players to play overseas. Currently, no Indian players are allowed to play in The Hundred (for men’s teams) unless they retire from cricket at all levels in India.

Currently, Sky and the BBC hold the rights to broadcasting The Hundred until 2028, having agreed partnerships with the ECB. With the new investors coming in, broadcast deals will be one of the key areas in which they look to drive growth in The Hundred. 

It has been reported that the ECB will retain control of the domestic broadcast deals but the new investors will be able to look for partnerships with overseas broadcasters.  India has a huge population of cricket fans, so increased streaming of The Hundred in the country will be a target for the new investors.

The most recent additions to the IPL are Lucknow Super Giants and Gujarat Titans, having joined in 2022. The impact of these additional teams has been felt on the pitch as Gujarat Titans won the IPL title in their first season. However, off the field, Gujarat Titans have also shown financial success as they led the revenue table in 2023. A large part of the IPL’s financial success comes from the spectators at home and those attending matches, with gate revenues cited as a one of “the three key drivers of growth”. The additions of the two new teams has meant that the IPL is expanding its geographical reach into new Indian cities with an increase in fans attending matches. 

The Hundred currently has no teams in the North East, despite Durham being public about their desire to join the competition. However, it’s unlikely that any new teams will be added until the end of the current broadcasting deal in 2028. If Durham do join the frame, they may be able to use Ben Stokes as their star player, which would undoubtedly lead to positive viewing figures in Chester-Le-Street and at home. 

Another area where there’s currently no Hundred club is the South West of England. With commercial growth expected to come by 2028, it’s likely that new teams will follow. However, the investors have obtained a veto on any expansion to ten teams (at least for now). 

Rise of the women’s game

Alongside the IPL, women's cricket in India is also rapidly gaining attention, thanks to the Women's Premier League. The influx of Indian investment in The Hundred is also financially strengthening English cricket. 

Furthermore, the Indian women’s team’s groundbreaking victory at the ICC 2025 World Cup marked a historic milestone, making them only the fourth nation to lift the trophy since the competition began in 1973 — joining Australia, England and New Zealand. These Indian women are quickly becoming global superstars, demonstrating remarkable grit and determination in pursuit of their dreams. The national team’s recent triumph — alongside the expansion of Indian-owned franchises in both the IPL and WPL — is elevating the global profile of Indian cricket, signalling a cultural shift and opening up new commercial opportunities.

The other notable investors

Away from the IPL owners, there are other notable new investors who’ll bring fresh ideas, expertise and ambitions for their respective clubs. London Spirit — who play at Lords — are 51% owned by the MCC and have partnered with tech consortium Cricket Investor Holdings Limited (Tech Titans), which is led by the CEO of cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, Nikesh Arora. 

While the partnership between the MCC and Cricket Investor Holdings Limited only took effect on the 1 October 2025, there’s already evidence and noise about what’s to come for the London club. Firstly, the stakeholders are currently setting up a London Spirit Board which will include four directors nominated by the club (one of whom will be the Board Chair, together with three directors from Tech Titans). The MCC Committee has already confirmed that England’s one-day World Cup winning captain from 2019, Eoin Morgan, will be a director. Arora, Egon Durban (Co-CEO of Silver Lake private equity firm) and Satyan Gajwani (Vice Chairman of the Times Internet) have been nominated by the Tech Titans. With a blend of cricket expertise and commercial acumen, the London Spirit Board is poised to forge partnerships that will be both profitable and customised to the club's needs.

Six potential major changes to The Hundred explained

The commercial opportunities that the new agreements in The Hundred are set to generate are exciting. As a proportion of total revenue, commercial income in English domestic cricket had declined from 14% in 2014 to 10% in 2023, highlighting the relatively slow growth of this revenue stream over the past ten years. For many county cricket clubs there appears to be clear room for improvement and the introduction of outside investors from India and USA could provide a ‘lightbulb’ moment for the marketing and projection of cricket as a sport. Alongside commercial opportunities, there could be fundamental changes to the sport to bring in new audiences and evolve the competition. 

We’ve highlighted six changes that could bring benefits to The Hundred.

1. New board

Since it began in 2021, The Hundred has been organised by the ECB holding stakes in each franchise. This has meant that the ECB has controlled commercial elements including kit manufacturers. Now that the investors control the ECB’s stake in the franchises, investors have greater control over what each franchise does with commercial deals. 

Furthermore, while the ECB still owns The Hundred competition, there’s a new ‘Hundred Board’ that’s in the process of being set up. This will be made up of 20 stakeholders and provide the investors of the eight franchises with 16 out of the 20 votes. This is designed to provide the investors with greater power — not only in respect of their clubs but also the direction of the competition itself. Some early discussions of changes relate to the format and system for player transfers. 

2. Marketing & social media

The Hundred has been successful in drawing new and younger audiences to cricket. The aim will now be to gain audiences from all over the world, at all times of the day. Many fans — especially younger fans — now prefer watching highlights rather than full games and unsurprisingly many watch sport content exclusively via social media. So, to attract viewers, The Hundred teams will need quality, engaging and consistent highlights across their social media platforms.

Seemingly, the ECB is aware of this as there is a post on The Hundred’s website with an advertisement for content creators to become embedded within the 16 teams in The Hundred. The statistics show that since the second quarter of 2024, the proportion of 16- to 24-year-olds in Europe who watch sports highlights or recaps online each week has increased by 22%. So, the new owners in The Hundred will want to ensure that they have the best social media marketers and content creators to draw in viewers. Yet ultimately, the fans are watching for the players — so we could see a battle to sign the players who entertain on short highlights packages, even if they may not be the highest run scorer or wicket taker.

3. New sponsorships

The new owners coming into The Hundred will try to gain sponsorships and partners that were previously controlled by the ECB. The MCC Committee has already begun making deals, with London Spirit’s kit for next season being manufactured by Nike — making it the first club to partner with the juggernaut global sportswear manufacturer. This is an early sign of the future of sponsorship and commercial partnerships in The Hundred.

Each Hundred team has — up until the summer of 2025 — had a brand from KP Snack’s inventory as their main front-of-shirt sponsor. However, the snack company will now advertise its products on the teams’ sleeves, leaving the main front-of-shirt position open for new sponsors. With the IPL influencing the Hundred, we could be set to see sponsors from Asian markets.

4. Format

One significant change that has already been discussed is a change to the format of the games themselves. The Hundred is famous for providing exactly what it says on the tin — short, exciting, 100-ball games. However, with the IPL played in the more popular T20 format, The Hundred’s  Managing Director, Vikram Banerjee, has already hinted that changing the format to T20 is something that may be discussed and could even be brought in by 2026. However, the ECB has declared that the 100-ball format is ‘categorically’ set to remain the same for 2026 and will most likely stay that way until the end of the current TV rights deal. A cricket T20 Club World Cup could then potentially follow to drive global growth of The Hundred. 

5. Draft system & overseas players

It has recently been announced that The Hundred will host a player auction in March 2026. Previously, players were put into teams via a three-stage system that involved retraining players, obtaining new players and a final wildcard draft of players who hadn’t been picked in the main draft. The draft had controls on it, including that teams could only register one overseas player via direct contract and the teams who finish lower in the previous years’ league table have priority in picking players for the next season.

However, unsurprisingly The Hundred has followed in the footsteps of the IPL and its exciting auction system. This allows for a greater number of overseas players and the auction itself gives teams the opportunity to out-bid each other to acquire players. The IPL also has a ‘Mega Auction’ every three years where teams are forced to retain fewer players. This is designed to be a widely publicised event like that seen in US sports.

The new auction in The Hundred will enable teams to recruit four players in a window from mid-November to the end of January and each team can retain a single player from their squad in 2025.  Franchises can now offer multi-year contracts and teams can no longer retain players by matching the salary offered by other teams. Notably, squads can have up to four overseas players as opposed to just one. This should open The Hundred to more global viewers who are attracted by players from their home countries taking part in the tournament. 

Vikram Banerjee, Managing Director of The Hundred, has said that the changes “will help us make the competition even better, ensuring we get the best players in the world and improving the standard of cricket and level of entertainment”.

6. Will the name of The Hundred change?

Despite this raft of mooted changes, one thing that’s set to stay is the name of the competition. Even if the game converts to T20 format, ‘The Hundred’ will remain. This is due to the ECB having “spent more than £100m marketing it”.

The ECB will also retain control over The Hundred to protect the wider cricket landscape and ensure that the competition remains unique and retains a short schedule during August (during school summer holidays). While there’s speculation that the investors will look to expand the length of the tournament, this would create other issues such as the viability of the T20 Blast — particularly if The Hundred’s format changes to T20 — as well as potential clashes with England home test matches. 

The Hundred set for drastic change

The historic investment into The Hundred and wider cricket in England and Wales is certainly set to change English cricket. The IPL is the perfect model that the new investors will look to for inspiration to drive growth. The potential for new commercial deals, broadcast rights and potentially even new teams could elevate The Hundred both domestically and abroad. 

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