‘200m Fortnite players… that’s the competition’: The Hundred’s challenge to cricketing convention

For the past four years, and probably longer, English cricket has been building towards a single moment. Now, it must build from it.

England’s maiden ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup title was not just improbably dramatic, but impeccably timed. A late deal between Sky Sports and Channel 4 delivered the first UK free-to-air audience for a national team game since 2005; the hosts and New Zealand treated them in turn to one of the great finals.  

A bit of luck, at the end of a lot of planning and hard work, reaped mass national attention for an outstanding, likeable team. For a sport that has suffered in the UK from limited visibility and falling participation, it was all cause for euphoria and relief.    

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), two years on from a similar home success for the women’s team, has long since lined up its next move. 

In 2020, it is launching a multi-strand project called Inspiring Generations, with a remit to take the sport beyond its traditional audience through schools, community and media initiatives. Next year also marks the start of a UK£1.1 billion, five-year broadcast deal with Sky Sports and the BBC that heralds the longer-term return of live free-to-air cricket. And central to all of that is the Hundred: a new eight-team, seven-city franchise competition for men and women with a bespoke 100-ball-a-side playing format.

Since news of it first emerged in a few lines of an April 2018 press release, nothing else in the English game has caused such consternation or animated debate. It is a cricketing Rorschach test with possible implications some way beyond the sport’s boundaries.      

100 reasons why – or a few

The Hundred – which will run alongside a reworked version of the existing domestic calendar and feature a mixture of English and overseas players – is the result of years of research and development at the ECB. With shorter games, featuring fewer teams, in a condensed tournament, it is at its core a made-to-measure play for a wider audience.  

“There are 21 million adults who like sport who are part of families in the UK,” says Sanjay Patel, managing director of the Hundred at the ECB, speaking to SportsPro. “We just think that is a huge opportunity, and there is no reason why cricket can’t capture that opportunity and be more relevant to those families.”

The first ball will be bowled next July. Much work remains to make the tournament a reality. A big date on the horizon for the Hundred is 20th October, when the first player draft will be broadcast live on Sky Sports. Before then, team names must be confirmed, logistics settled and venue contracts signed.

The eight new franchises will be attached to eight international grounds in major urban areas. The existing 18 elite county clubs, each of whom will receive a UK£1.3 million annual guarantee from the tournament, are being grouped together geographically to run them. Yet a recent report in the Times detailed friction between the counties, concerns about their financial stake in the venture, and disappointment that the Hundred’s introduction will lead to a downgrading of the domestic tournament in the Cricket World Cup’s 50-over format.

ECB chief executive Tom Harrison (left) is nonetheless “very confident” those discussions will come to a fruitful end.

“We’re getting into the nitty-gritty and the detail of multiple agreements across multiple areas of business,” Harrison tells SportsPro. “It’s not just about the Hundred, it’s actually about the relationship that we have with our stakeholders over the next five years. What are we funding? What are we asking in return for that funding?”

He continues: “Do I think it’s an easy conversation to have? No. The concept of building a new tournament with new teams is a challenging one for our environment, of course it is. But I think in every case, if you look at the voting patterns, if you look at the evidence, we’ve had overwhelming support for this over two and a half years. But there’s still contracts to be negotiated and that’s absolutely right and proper that we have those debates.

“With respect, I don’t think this is nearly as serious a scenario as it sounds. We’re all professional people, trying to do the right thing and the best thing for the organisation that we represent. That’s what I would expect in any negotiation. I wouldn’t say I’m overly concerned about where we are at the moment. I think it’s a simple case of, a lot of the time, your negotiation will fit the time that you’ve got to have that negotiation. In life, that tends to be the case.”

The concept of building a new tournament with new teams is a challenging one for our environment, of course it is. But I think in every case, if you look at the voting patterns, if you look at the evidence, we’ve had overwhelming support for this over two and a half years

Tom Harrison, ECB chief executive 

Eoin Morgan is a high-profile supporter of the Hundred 

The counties are only one constituency that the Hundred needs to win round. High-profile supporters have stepped forward – the most recent being World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan – but critics in the media and traditional fanbase have been unstinting in their opposition. There have been missteps, some of them more damaging than others, all of them pounced upon without mercy. The ECB’s leadership recognises it has got things wrong in the rollout.

A lack of detail is one problem – this, after all, is a tournament to be contested by teams that do not yet exist, under rules that have only been played in a trial setting.

On top of that, Patel concedes the “mixed reaction” is in part because ECB has not yet succeeded in explaining publicly why the tournament is happening. The Hundred, as he puts it, is a response to three factors that had emerged in ECB research as barriers to a broader fanbase.

One is “time”, and the competition for it. A format shortened from the three hours of T20 matches to around two hours is designed to offer more flexibility to spectators, not least to families. Moreover, it is a neater fit in the evening schedules of a generalist broadcaster like the BBC.

The next issue is “complexity”, with The Hundred’s much-discussed new ruleset intended to offer a quicker route into the sport for newcomers. This is as much about presentation as regulation, clearing out the clutter for a single visual hook.

“It’s really simple,” Patel says. “It’s 100 balls, it’s a countdown. Runs go up and whoever gets the most runs wins. And the way that you can present that in the stadium, the way that you can present that on digital, and the way that you can present that on a broadcast means that you can simplify the game, which I think is hugely exciting because I think it will make it more accessible to more people.” 

Finally, there is the matter of “perception”. “What teenagers were telling us,” Patel says, “was that if you make the game faster, more exciting, more entertaining, they’re more likely to get involved.”

It is an outlook that has left the ECB open to charges of a lack of confidence in the game of cricket as it exists. Patel, though, argues that sport can no longer overlook the threat it faces from other forms of entertainment, in an age when limited choice and accidental discovery have given way to a relentless battle for attention.

“There’s 200 million players of Fortnite,” he says. “That is who we are competing against. So if you don’t interrupt young people in a different way, if you don’t engage them in a different way and you don’t talk to them in a different way, they’re not just going to automatically come into your sport.”

From concept to reality

The Hundred’s architects looked at “various different organisational models” for the new competition before settling on one that “has small dedicated resource” but will make use of “existing infrastructure and existing processes” for running the cricketing operation. The vision is of a “startup” that will apply the lessons of its first year to become more integrated in further seasons.

Steve Elworthy, the managing director of Cricket World Cup England and Wales 2019 and a veteran of several ICC global events, will take on key organisational responsibilities for the Hundred at the end of the year as part of his new remit as director of special projects at the ECB. He will join a team whose commercial department is growing as it explores opportunities with brands, in the digital space, and with its broadcast partners.

“What media contracts reflect is interest in your product from your fans,” says Harrison. In that respect the BBC and Sky Sports have already made plain their commitment to the new venture, something Patel attributes to the prospect of taking cricket to “a younger, more diverse audience”.

“[Sky and the BBC have] been part of the thinking from a marketing point of view, how we’re thinking about it from a digital point of view, how we’re thinking about it from an event presentation point of view,” Patel adds. “And, of course, their expertise is in how we bring that to life from a TV point of view.”

In order for The Hundred to make the required impact, Patel believes it is essential to consider the lessons not just of other sporting events but of other seasonal entertainment programming.

“The other thing is that it’s not just about Sky Sports and it’s not just about BBC Sport,” he says. “We’ve been talking to both Sky and the BBC about how we use all of their assets to help promote the Hundred.

“An example of that is the way the BBC have set up their production team. They haven’t set up a sport production team, they’ve set up a kind of multi-platform production team, which consists of people from sport but also people from radio, people from younger audiences, people from other parts of the BBC.”

None of the sponsors for the tournament have yet been confirmed, but Patel will reveal details of a commercial model that has also been designed from scratch.

“We’ll have a presenting partner,” he says. “We’ll have a team partner who’ll be on the front of all the shirts. We’ll then have a number of official partners underneath that. What we are determined to do is think about partners who are in keeping with the strategy of the Hundred. So when we think about getting to a family audience, what we are looking to do is get brands who are currently talking to that family audience.”

What we are determined to do is think about partners who are in keeping with the strategy of the Hundred. So when we think about getting to a family audience, what we are looking to do is get brands who are currently talking to that family audience

Sanjay Patel, managing director of the Hundred

Whatever the identity of those incoming partners, whether new to cricket or not, they will be entering a commercial environment the sport has not previously seen in England. Sky has made its own guarantees to build security and value in what Patel frames as an unprecedented approach.

“We’ll have a walled garden around all of the inventory on Sky and we’ll be selling that as part of the package, so as a brand you can come in and you’ll not only get protection from the Hundred point of view, you’ll also get protection on broadcast,” he says. “And again, how we then stretch that into a broadcast relationship between the commercial partner, the Hundred and Sky is something that I think is unique in this market. I don’t think it’s been done before.”

In one respect, that updated sponsorship model can be seen as another way of rounding out the identity of a competition which is making such a point of its difference. But Patel also views it is an essential response to the demands of an increasingly challenging marketplace.

“You’ll see innovations in there that will take cricket on to another level from a broadcast point of view,” he suggests. “It’s important that we do that everywhere, and the sponsorship model is something that I personally think all sports need to evaluate, and I think all sports need to think about how they keep that model fresh and how they think about that offering to potential commercial partners, and make sure that they’re still relevant.

“Rights holders need to think about how it is that they stay relevant to the next set of commercial partners, and that’s certainly one of the things that we’ve done with The Hundred.”

The tournament that has reportedly set aside UK£6 million for event production costs such as pyrotechnics

A strong commercial performance will be vital for a tournament that has reportedly set aside UK£6 million for event production costs like pyrotechnics and other in-venue entertainment, and budgeted UK£800,000 for on-the-ground marketing for each franchise. That represents a spend some way in excess of any previous English domestic cricket tournament.  

“The projected revenue is around UK£250 million over five years,” says Patel in response to suggestions of high risk. “The good news is we’ve secured a lot of that revenue already [through the media deal], and then we’re going to have to find more revenue through sponsorship, through ticketing, through merchandise, and some other revenue streams as well. So the tournament starts in a very healthy place in terms of revenue.

“The projected cost at the moment is UK£180 million over five [years], and it is very unique for a cricket tournament to make money in the first year. The only other cricket tournament that’s done it is the IPL, and they had to sell their teams to make a profit. The Big Bash, which is the Australian equivalent, made a loss for the first five years.

“The Hundred will make money from day one. So the investment is already covered. I think that’s a strong and healthy place to be.”

Finding its place

There is a sense that while some opponents to the Hundred will remain implacable, others can be brought round when there is something more tangible to contemplate – when they know the composition of its teams and have seen a game played to its rules. Patel, for all the difficulties faced so far, is evidently proud of what is being attempted.

“I love the game of cricket,” he says. “I love what we’re trying to do. I love the ambition of the organisation. I love the ambition of a sport who is looking to think about how we grow.”

However the Hundred fares, cricket in England will hardly be the last sport to try something radical in the face of rapid change across media, entertainment and culture. In men’s tennis, the ATP Next Gen Finals have been a laboratory for even bolder experiments since their launch in 2017, while world basketball governing body Fiba has created a new context for its sport at international level through the expansion of its 3×3 format.

“I think sports are going to have to think about what they offer,” says Patel, who notes cricket's own passage through timeless Tests to one-dayers and Twenty20. “I think the strength of cricket is that we can do it and it can still have high-quality cricket at the heart of it. I think that’s the difference between us and some of the other sports that may have to innovate.”

What the Hundred allows us to do is present the game in a different way. It allows us to bring in a different audience and I think it will also appeal to the existing fans

English cricket, for all its long-term concerns about fading away, also has strengths to build upon. As Harrison points out, the T20 Blast will attract 900,000 fans into English grounds over the course of the summer while the Ashes series with Australia will set national records for Test match attendance. Yet he defines that continued progress as the result of constant measurement and assessment.

Patel also accepts that the current fan feels well served by existing fare. “We’re not actually taking any of that away,” he says. “We’ll still have those competitions being played in our summer, which is important. What the Hundred allows us to do is present the game in a different way. It allows us to bring in a different audience and I think it will also appeal to the existing fans. I’m convinced.”

Informal conversations have taken place between the ECB and overseas boards about the Hundred, while the playing regulations are likely to filter into grassroots competitions if the tournament is a popular success. For the time being, though, it is a concept machine-tooled for a specific purpose in a specific context.

After all the intrigue, how well it delivers on that will be what counts. 

For the ECB, a radical, divisive and still faintly mysterious tournament must build on the success of England’s Cricket World Cup-winning summer, and answer a generational set of questions on how to create an inclusive sporting community.

For the past four years, and probably longer, English cricket has been building towards a single moment. Now, it must build from it.

England’s maiden ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup title was not just improbably dramatic, but impeccably timed. A late deal between Sky Sports and Channel 4 delivered the first UK free-to-air audience for a national team game since 2005; the hosts and New Zealand treated them in turn to one of the great finals.  

A bit of luck, at the end of a lot of planning and hard work, reaped mass national attention for an outstanding, likeable team. For a sport that has suffered in the UK from limited visibility and falling participation, it was all cause for euphoria and relief.    

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), two years on from a similar home success for the women’s team, has long since lined up its next move.

Next year also marks the start of a UK£1.1 billion, five-year broadcast deal with Sky Sports and the BBC that heralds the longer-term return of live free-to-air cricket. And central to that is the Hundred: a new eight-team, seven-city franchise competition for men and women with a bespoke 100-ball-a-side playing format.

Since news of it first emerged in a few lines of an April 2018 press release, nothing else in the English game has caused such consternation or animated debate. It is a cricketing Rorschach test with possible implications some way beyond the sport’s boundaries.      

100 reasons why – or a few

The Hundred – which will run alongside the current domestic calendar and feature a mixture of English and overseas players – is the result of years of research and development at the ECB. It is, at its core, a made-to-measure play for a wider audience.  

“There are 21 million adults who like sport who are part of families in the UK,” says Sanjay Patel, managing director of The Hundred at the ECB, speaking to SportsPro. “We just think that is a huge opportunity, and there is no reason why cricket can’t capture that opportunity and be more relevant to those families.”

The first ball will be bowled next July. Much work remains to make the tournament a reality. A big date on the horizon for the Hundred is 20th October, when the first player draft will be broadcast live on Sky Sports. Before then, team names must be confirmed, logistics settled and venue contracts signed.

The existing 18 elite county clubs, each of whom will receive a UK£1.3 million annual guarantee from the tournament, are being grouped together geographically to run the new franchises. Yet a recent report in the Times detailed friction between the counties, concerns about their financial stake in the venture, and disappointment that the Hundred’s introduction will lead to a downgrading of the domestic tournament in the Cricket World Cup’s 50-over format.

ECB chief executive Tom Harrison was nonetheless very confident those discussions will come to a fruitful end.

“We’re getting into the nitty-gritty and the detail of multiple agreements across multiple areas of business,” Harrison tells SportsPro. “It’s not just about the Hundred, it’s actually about the relationship that we have with our stakeholders over the next five years. What are we funding? What are we asking in return for that funding?”

He continued: “Do I think it’s an easy conversation to have? No. The concept of building a new tournament with new teams is a challenging one for our environment, of course it is. But I think in every case, if you look at the voting patterns, if you look at the evidence, we’ve had overwhelming support for this over two and a half years. But there’s still contracts to be negotiated and that’s absolutely right and proper that we have those debates.

“With respect, I don’t think this is nearly as serious a scenario as it sounds. We’re all professional people, trying to do the right thing and the best thing for the organisation that we represent. That’s what I would expect in any negotiation. I wouldn’t say I’m overly concerned about where we are at the moment. I think it’s a simple case of, a lot of the time, your negotiation will fit the time that you’ve got to have that negotiation. In life, that tends to be the case.”

The counties are only one constituency that the Hundred needs to win round. High-profile supporters have stepped forward – the most recent being World Cup-winning captain Eoin Morgan – but critics in the media and traditional fanbase have been unstinting in their opposition. There have been missteps, some of them more damaging than others, all of them pounced upon without mercy. The ECB’s leadership recognises it has got things wrong in the rollout.

A lack of detail is one problem – this, after all, is a tournament to be contested by teams that do not yet exist, under rules that have only been played in a trial setting.

On top of that, though, Patel accepts the “mixed reaction” is in part because ECB has not yet succeeded in explaining publicly why the tournament is happening.  The Hundred, Patel explains, is a response to three factors that had emerged in ECB research as barriers to a broader fanbase.

One is “time”, and the competition for it. A format slightly shortened from T20 matches to around two hours is intended to appeal not just to fans but to the appetite of a generalist broadcaster in the BBC.

The next issue is “complexity”, with The Hundred’s much-discussed new ruleset intended to offer a quicker route into the sport for newcomers. This is as much about presentation as regulation, clearing out the clutter for a single visual hook.

“It’s really simple,” Patel says. “It’s 100 balls, it’s a countdown. Runs go up and whoever gets the most runs wins. And the way that you can present that in the stadium, the way that you can present that on digital, and the way that you can present that on a broadcast means that you can simplify the game, which I think is hugely exciting because I think it will make it more accessible to more people.” 

Finally, there is the matter of “perception”. “What teenagers were telling us,” Patel says, “was that if you make the game faster, more exciting, more entertaining, they’re more likely to get involved.”

It is an outlook that has left the ECB open to charges of a lack of confidence in the game of cricket as it exists. Patel, though, argues that sport can no longer overlook the threat it faces from other forms of entertainment, in an age when limited choice and accidental discovery have given way to a relentless battle for attention.

“There’s 200 million players of Fortnite,” he says. “That is who we are competing against. So if you don’t interrupt young people in a different way, if you don’t engage them in a different way and you don’t talk to them in a different way, they’re not just going to automatically come into your sport.”

From concept to reality

The Hundred’s architects looked at “various different organisational models” for the new competition before settling on one that “has small dedicated resource” but will make use of “existing infrastructure and existing processes” for running the cricketing operation.

Steve Elworthy, the managing director of Cricket World Cup England and Wales 2019 and a veteran of several ICC global events, will take on key organisational responsibilities for the Hundred at the end of the year as part of his new remit as director of special projects at the ECB. He will head a bolstered-up commercial team exploring opportunities with brands, digital and broadcasters.

 “What media contracts reflect is interest in your product from your fans,” says Harrison. In that respect the BBC and Sky Sports have already made plain their commitment to the new venture. The ECB think that is because they understand the opportunity to reach younger, more diverse audience.

“[Sky and the BBC] been part of the thinking from a marketing point of view, how we’re thinking about it from a digital point of view, how we’re thinking about it from an event presentation point of view,” Patel adds. “And, of course, their expertise is in how we bring that to life from a TV point of view.”

In order for The Hundred to make the required impact, Patel believes it is essential to consider the lessons not just of other sporting events but of other seasonal entertainment programming.

“The other thing is that it’s not just about Sky Sports and it’s not just about BBC Sport,” he says. “We’ve been talking to both Sky and the BBC about how we use all of their assets to help promote the Hundred.

“An example of that is the way the BBC have set up their production team. They haven’t set up a sport production team, they’ve set up a kind of multi-platform production team, which consists of people from sport but also people from radio, people from younger audiences, people from other parts of the BBC.”

None of the sponsors for the tournament have yet been confirmed, but Patel will reveal details of a commercial model that has also been designed from scratch.

“We’ll have a presenting partner,” he says. “We’ll have a team partner who’ll be on the front of all the shirts. We’ll then have a number of official partners underneath that. What we are determined to do is think about partners who are in keeping with the strategy of the Hundred. So when we think about getting to a family audience, what we are looking to do is get brands who are currently talking to that family audience.”

Whatever the identity of those incoming partners, whether they are new to cricket or not, they will be entering a commercial environment the sport has not seen in England before. Sky has made its own guarantees to build security and value in what Patel frames as an unprecedented approach.

“We’ll have a walled garden around all of the inventory on Sky and we’ll be selling that as part of the package, so as a brand you can come in and you’ll not only get protection from the Hundred point of view, you’ll also get protection on broadcast,” he says. “And again, how we then stretch that into a broadcast relationship between the commercial partner, the Hundred and Sky is something that I think is unique in this market. I don’t think it’s been done before.”

In one respect, that updated sponsorship model can be seen as another way of rounding out the identity of a competition which is making such a point of its difference. But Patel also views it is an essential response to the demands of an increasingly challenging marketplace.

“You’ll see innovations in there that will take cricket on to another level from a broadcast point of view,” he suggests. “It’s important that we do that everywhere, and the sponsorship model is something that I personally think all sports need to evaluate, and I think all sports need to think about how they keep that model fresh and how they think about that offering to potential commercial partners, and make sure that they’re still relevant.

“Rights holders need to think about how it is that they stay relevant to the next set of commercial partners, and that’s certainly one of the things that we’ve done with The Hundred.”

A strong commercial performance will be vital for a tournament that has reportedly set aside UK£6 million for event production costs like pyrotechnics and other in-venue entertainment, while UK£800,000 has been budgeted for on-the-ground marketing for each franchise. That represents a spend some way in excess of any previous English domestic cricket tournament.  

“The projected revenue is around UK£250 million over five years,” says Patel by way of explanation. “The good news is we’ve secured a lot of that revenue already [through the media deal], and then we’re going to have to find more revenue through sponsorship, through ticketing, through merchandise, and some other revenue streams as well. So the tournament starts in a very healthy place in terms of revenue.

“The projected cost at the moment is UK£180 million over five [years], and it is very unique for a cricket tournament to make money in the first year. The only other cricket tournament that’s done it is the IPL, and they had to sell their teams to make a profit. The Big Bash, which is the Australian equivalent, made a loss for the first five years.

“The Hundred will make money from day one. So the investment is already covered. I think that’s a strong and healthy place to be.”

Finding its place

There is a sense that while some opponents to the Hundred will remain implacable, others will be brought round when there is something more tangible to contemplate – when they know the composition of its teams and have seen a game played to its rules. Patel, for all the difficulties faced so far, is evidently proud of what is being attempted.

“I love the game of cricket,” he says. “I love what we’re trying to do. I love the ambition of the organisation. I love the ambition of a sport who is looking to think about how we grow.”

However the Hundred fares, cricket in England will hardly be the last sport to try something radical in the face of rapid change across media, entertainment and culture. In men’s tennis, the ATP Next Gen Finals have been a laboratory for even bolder experiments since their launch in 2017, while world basketball governing body Fiba has created a new context for its sport at international level through the expansion of its 3×3 format.

“I think sports are going to have to think about what they offer,” says Patel. “I think the strength of cricket is that we can do it and it can still have high-quality cricket at the heart of it. I think that’s the difference between us and some of the other sports that may have to innovate.

Patel notes cricket’s history of innovation, pointing to the sport’s passage through timeless Tests to one-dayers and Twenty20, with the arrival of each new format bringing its share of scepticism.

English cricket, for all its long-term concerns about fading away, also has strengths to build upon. As Harrison points out, the T20 Blast will attract 900,000 fans into English grounds over the course of the summer while the Ashes series with Australia will set national records for Test match attendance.

“We’re not actually taking any of that away,” he says. “We’ll still have those competitions being played in our summer, which is important. What the Hundred allows us to do is present the game in a different way. It allows us to bring in a different audience and I think it will also appeal to the existing fans. I’m convinced.”

Informal conversations have taken place between the ECB and overseas boards about the Hundred, while the playing regulations are likely to filter into grassroots competitions if the tournament is a popular success. For the time being, though, it is a concept machine-tooled for a specific purpose in a specific context