In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Modi published details from the prospectus that the ECB’s financial advisors, Raine Group and Deloitte, has sent out (under NDA) to its potential investors, alongside a lengthy post in which he dismissed their calculations as “dangerously overambitious and unsustainable”.
As recently as February, Modi himself was reportedly an interested party, telling The Telegraph that he had valued the Hundred at US$1 billion over a ten-year period, and that he had private investors ready to get behind an expanded ten-team tournament. However, his informal offer is believed to have been turned down by the ECB who did not want to sell the competition outright.
Now, however, Modi has poured scorn on the tournament’s viability. Though he accepts it is “plausible” that the ECB’s domestic TV rights will rise in value as projected, from £54 million to £85 million annually, he issued a withering assessment of the Hundred’s place in the international market, where it faces particular competition from rival Northern Hemisphere tournaments such as the Caribbean Premier League and Major League Cricket in the USA.
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“The ECB’s financial projections for The Hundred, particularly beyond 2026, appear overly optimistic and disconnected from reality,” he wrote. “The International TV rights figures make little sense, given the global competition from other cricket leagues like the IPL. It’s unlikely The Hundred will attract the necessary international audience to justify these inflated numbers.”
The ECB is understood to have anticipated some pushback against its figures, with potential investors inevitably seeking a favourable deal, and point to Modi’s prior interest in the tournament as proof of concept.
Nevertheless, his criticism is significant, because it was Modi’s establishment of the IPL in 2008 that unleashed the full potential of T20 cricket in the first place, a format that the ECB themselves devised in 2002, but failed to adequately market – an oversight that played a role in the board settling on 100-ball cricket as its new point of difference.
Fifteen years later, the IPL’s media rights for 2023 to 2027 were secured for a record US$6.2 billion, cementing it as the world’s second-most valuable sports league on a per-game basis, behind only NFL. And, as Modi wrote in his post on X, each of the teams involved “are valued at US$1 billion based on 16 years of performance”.
“By contrast, as per my analysis, The Hundred’s teams are projected to be worth a mere £5 million to £25 million in the best-case scenario in my MOST CONSIDERED #VIEW, with Manchester maxing out at £8.5 million,” he added.
“Worse still, The Hundred struggles to match even the Caribbean Premier League’s profitability, a sobering indication of its financial frailty. The Hundred appears to be on shaky financial ground, with projections that fail to inspire confidence in its long-term viability as these look dangerously overambitious and unsustainable.”
Andrew Miller is UK editor of ESPNcricinfo. @miller_cricket
Source: ESPN Crickinfo