The Competition That Never Shall Be Named: No Evidence of a New Audience

ECB admits no evidence Hundred has attracted new fans to other forms of cricket

 

• Richard Gould: ‘That’s work we need to do’
• ECB long boasted tournament attracts different audience

 

Simon Burnton, The Guardian

 

Thu 31 Jul 2025 13.34 BST

 

Richard Gould, the England and Wales Cricket Board’s chief executive, has admitted his organisation has no evidence that new fans attracted by the Hundred have gone on to attend other forms of the game. The ECB has long boasted that the tournament has attracted a different audience to existing formats.

 

“The Hundred is all about throwing cricket’s doors open – and it’s already delivering,” the ECB’s then chief executive, Tom Harrison, said after the first tournament in 2021. “We need to grow cricket, reach more people, and that’s exactly what the Hundred does.”

 

A report published last October found that 31% of tickets for the Hundred have been bought by women, 23% were bought for juniors and 41% of buyers attended in family groups. But on the day counties received their first down payment on the windfall generated by external investment into the eight Hundred franchises Gould said no work had been done into finding out if any of those new fans remain involved in the sport when the tournament is out of action.

 

“That’s probably a bit of work we need to do,” he said. “Just to check that when people do come in, where do they go? Because you might get some coming in to Test cricket [who] then go to the Hundred and Hundred into Test cricket. We haven’t done that work in any great detail.” That lack of work is surprising given cross-pollination between formats is one of the ECB’s primary goals.

 

“Fandom is really important for us, whether it’s England, Leicestershire or London Spirit,” Gould said. “That’s the key. We’ve got a really dedicated core audience, which is relatively small compared to other sports. Then we’ve got lots of people that are very interested in cricket, but perhaps don’t come to it as often as we want.

 

“We know the interest is there, we just need to get people to come more often for all formats, rather than just that ‘I’ve been to the Test once a year’ type of thing.”

 

This year’s Hundred, which starts at Lord’s on Tuesday, is likely to be the last before new owners start to push through significant changes, from team names and kits to the length of the format itself. “That’s the kind of conversation we’re starting to get into now,” said Vikram Banerjee, the tournament’s managing director. “It would be slightly odd to bring all these great people in and then just leave it as it is.”

 

Deals for the sale of part or full stakes in six of the eight Hundred franchises were finalised this week, with the final two expected imminently. The total investment has been put at £520m, of which an initial sum of “just north of £400,000” has been released to every county. Host counties can expect to receive a minimum of £18m and non-hosts around £25m.

 

The possibility of adding a ninth team has already been discussed, but non-hosts have been warned against spending their windfalls on unnecessary stadium upgrades. “When giving guidance as to what a future expansion team needs to look like in terms of facilities, we’re not going to be setting huge capacities,” Gould said.

 

“What we don’t want is a load of empty plastic seats around the place. We’re not looking to see investment going into creating white elephants.”

16/07

The Haves and the Have Nots

15/07

Wild card day for those eight franchises.

"Wild", Notts fans can be entitled to be livid as another player from our regular One Day Cup squad is signed-up by the Birmingham franchise.

The biggest name in the H*ndred mens* will be Liam Patterson-White, eighteen characters plus the hyphen.

As for those Notts cricket supporters that can stomach the August competition and still feel that they support the real Nottinghamshire club with integrity with no conflict, then perhaps rather than watch the Trent R*ckets they should splash out on tickets at Edgbaston as their franchise has the most Outlaws representing them: Duckett, Clarke, Freddie and now Liam, whereas the Trent Bridge franchise only has Calvin and Dillon in its squad. Not even Silver Fox could get his inform son drafted, now that he too has a snout in the R*ckets' feeding trough.

*One more character than Barrel, "Tilly Corteen-Coleman" in the women's

 The H*ndred sale saved up to six counties