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NEW DELHI: A consortium of US-based Indian techies have won the bid to own 49% of The Hundred‘s Lord’s franchise London Spirit.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, Times Internet Limited vice chairman Satyan Gajwani, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, Silverlake Technology CEO Egon Durban, Sequoia’s Jim Goetz and two others are part of the consortium that participated in an e-auction process on Friday to grab the franchise. The side has their home at the Lord’s.
Arora, Pichai and Narayen are known to be big cricket fans while Nadella co-owns Major Cricket League’s (MLC) Seattle Orcas franchise and Gajwani owns and runs Willow TV, cricket’s biggest streaming platform in the west as well as Cricbuzz.
GB£295 million is the 100% bid value of which the consortium will pay 49%. The remaining 51% will remain with the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) as part of The Hundred’s business model.
The Hundred is in the middle of securing private investments for the eight teams in the tournament and Mumbai Indians signed a landmark agreement to take 49% stake in the Oval Invincibles. Reliance Industries Limited, which owns the Mumbai Indians franchise, became the first external investor in The Hundred on Thursday.
The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) got the process underway in September last year to improve the financial health of the tournament, and the sport overall. Multiple Indian Premier League (IPL) franchises showed interest during the early stages but it’s reliably understood that both Kolkata Knight Riders (KKR) and Chennai Super Kings (CSK) could pull out due to the business model which they felt was not sustainable.
The ECB wants to sell the 49% stake it owns in each of the teams and the process is likely to be completed in the coming few days.
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