English domestic cricket’s biggest experiment in private ownership has now fully played out on the balance sheet. The England and Wales Cricket Board completed the sale of stakes in all eight Hundred franchises, generating more than £500 million that the ECB says will be reinvested into cricket across England and Wales, and the fallout is now visible in the form of rebranded teams, new badges and fresh money flowing in from some of the biggest names in world cricket ownership.
Four teams, four IPL connections
Every one of the eight Hundred franchises has welcomed new investors this cycle, either through partial or full takeovers, and four of those new ownership groups are directly linked to Indian Premier League franchises. That overlap means fans in Manchester, Leeds and London are now watching teams financially tied to some of the same ownership groups that run IPL sides, a level of cross-league investment that would have been unthinkable when the Hundred launched in 2021 as a wholly ECB-owned competition designed to introduce cricket to new audiences.
Rebrands: Oval Invincibles become MI London
The clearest evidence of the new money is on the shirts themselves. Oval Invincibles have been renamed MI London, an unmistakable nod to the Mumbai Indians ownership group’s involvement, while Manchester Originals have become Manchester Super Giants and Northern Superchargers have been rebranded Sunrisers Leeds. Each rename corresponds to a new majority or significant investor taking creative control over identity as well as playing budget, a stark departure from the ECB-designed regional branding the competition launched with.
Boehly, RPSG and the American money
Beyond the IPL-linked groups, American capital has also poured into the competition. Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly has acquired a 49% stake in Trent Rockets, extending a familiar pattern of Premier League ownership money moving into cricket’s newest short-format product. On the Indian side, RPSG Group, which also owns IPL side Lucknow Super Giants, paid for 70% of what is now Manchester Super Giants. The rough split described publicly around the league, roughly half under IPL-linked ownership and the other half backed by American investment, gives the Hundred a genuinely international financial base only five years after its first ball was bowled.
A new auction format to match the new money
The investment has come with structural changes to how teams build squads. This year’s auction, which opened in March at Piccadilly Lights in London, sorted players into Hero, Ranked and Nominated tiers, with franchises bidding competitively in a format explicitly modelled on the IPL’s own auction mechanics rather than the draft system the Hundred previously used. That shift, adopting an IPL-style bidding process just as IPL-linked owners took control of several franchises, is unlikely to be a coincidence, and gives the new investors a squad-building process they are already deeply familiar with from their other franchise.
Praise, scepticism, and what was lost
Supporters of the sale point to the scale of the windfall, over £500 million reinvested into the domestic game, as validation that private capital was the right route for a competition that has struggled at times to justify its place alongside county cricket on an already crowded English summer calendar. Critics worry that handing majority stakes and naming rights to overseas ownership groups erodes the very sense of local identity the Hundred was originally built to create, replacing regional names with global franchise branding recognisable mainly to IPL viewers rather than local fans in Manchester or Leeds.
What comes next for the eight franchises
With ownership now settled and a new IPL-style auction format bedded in, attention turns to whether the fresh investment translates into higher-quality overseas recruitment and sharper competition on the field, or whether the rebrands and new logos end up as the most visible change fans actually notice. Cricket Australia’s own moves to explore selling BBL franchise stakes suggest the Hundred’s sale is being watched closely as a template elsewhere in the sport, meaning how MI London, Manchester Super Giants and Sunrisers Leeds perform under their new owners this season will carry weight well beyond English cricket’s own boundaries.
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