Tech consortium agrees £145m stake in London Spirit

A consortium of tech-billionaires has agreed to pay a sizable sum of £145 million for their stake in London Spirit, as well as the opportunity to collaborate with Lord’s Ground.

The consortium has approved the purchase of 49% of Spirit, resulting in a total franchise value of about $ 300 million under the leadership of Chief Executive of Palo Alto Networks, Nikesh Arora.

The owners of the Major League Cricket (MLC) franchise, Washington Freedom, made a deal to purchase a stake in Welsh Fire in Friday’s second auction.

Sanjay Govil, an Indian-American IT entrepreneur, supported Freedom and made a successful bid of around £80 million to potentially secure a 49% stake in Fire worth over £40 million.

The Glazer family, co-owners of Manchester United, Todd Boehly, a shareholder in Chelsea, and Indian Premier League side Lucknow Super Giants are thought to have defeated the winning bidders for Spirit.

The fee demonstrates the lure of Spirit’s base Lord’s, the home of cricket.

Internally, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) had valued all eight Hundred teams combined at a minimum of £350m.

Following an opening pair on Thursday, Friday’s sales included third and fourth stakes auctions for the eight hundred teams. So far, the sales come to a total of around £285m.

The owners of Mumbai Indians, an Indian Premier League team, acquired a 49% stake in Oval Invincibles on Thursday for around £60 million.

After purchasing a similar stake in Birmingham Phoenix, Knighthead Capital, the Birmingham City Football Club’s owners, for about £40 million.

Like the MCC, both Surrey and Warwickshire, hosts of the Invincibles and Phoenix respectively, opted to retain their 51% shares.

To finalize the details, there will now be an eight-week exclusivity partnership for each of the deals.

The three successful bidders’ varied backgrounds, in addition to the stated ECB desire for a mix of investors, would favor an IPL takeover of The Hundred.

Cricket Investor Holdings Limited, the consortium that approved the Spirit deal, is wholly owned by Cricket Investor Holdings Limited. Indian-born Arora has been leading Palo Alto Networks, a cybersecurity giant, since 2018. He previously worked for Google for ten years.

The MCC described Arora’s group as “11 high net-worth individuals”. The consortium includes Egon Durban, the chief executive of Silver Lake Management, Satyan Gajwani, the co-founder of Major League Cricket and vice-chairman of Times Internet, Satya Nadella, the chief executive of Microsoft, Shantanu Narayen the chief executive of Adobe, and Sundar Pichai, the chief executive of Google.

Montreal-born Govil is the founder and chairman of Infinite Computer Solutions, which is based in Rockville, Maryland and has an annual revenue of $2bn with 20, 000 employees globally.

With Cricket New South Wales and a strong Australian feel to their organization, Freedom has a strategic partnership.

Freedom’s owners beat off interest from Capri International, which owns UP Warriorz in India’s Women’s Premier League and Sharjah Warriors in the UAE’s International League T20.

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenny, the Hollywood owners of Wrexham Football Club, were among those who wanted to buy a stake in Fire but didn’t participate in the closing auction.

The Hundred competition is still under the control of the ECB, but it is selling stakes in the teams to raise money for the game in this nation.

The hosts of the eight teams have a 51% ownership stake in the franchise, which they can either sell or keep, with the ECB selling the remaining 49%.

The eight hosts are Lord’s (Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) /London Spirit), The Oval (Surrey/Oval Invincibles), Southampton (Hampshire/Southern Brave), Cardiff (Glamorgan/Welsh Fire), Trent Bridge (Nottinghamshire/Trent Rockets), Edgbaston (Warwickshire/Birmingham Phoenix), Old Trafford (Lancashire/Manchester Originals) and Headingley (Yorkshire/Northern Superchargers).

Of the 51% the hosts have been given, they can keep all, or choose to sell all or part of their stake.

From the total money raised, 10% will go straight to the recreational game. The 18 first-class counties will receive the MCC’s profits from the 49% sales. 10% of the proceeds from a host’s sale of all or a portion of its stake will be divided between the 18 counties and MCC.