Glamorgan Cricket set to land £20m boost from equity sales in The Hundred franchises

Glamorgan Cricket is set to receive a financial boost of around £20m from the sale of equity stakes in the franchise teams participating in The Hundred competition.

As part of the sales process, North American tech billionaire Sanjay Govil has agreed to acquire a 50% ownership stake in one of the eight Hundred teams, Welsh Fire, based at Glamorgan Cricket’s home ground, Sophia Gardens.

Both parties have now entered into an exclusivity period to finalise the deal - a process expected to take around eight weeks.

With just a few franchise deals left to be concluded, the equity sales are expected to boost the total enterprise value of the eight teams to around £900m - far higher than initially forecast.

At the outset of the sales process, some commentators speculated that Welsh Fire would have the lowest enterprise value post-investment, at around £35m. However, the investment by Mr Govil, who is understood to have rejected late overtures from other franchises, has shattered those assumptions, valuing Welsh Fire at more than double (£80m).

The valuation brings Welsh Fire on a par with Hundred franchise rival Birmingham Phoenix.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), which will ring-fence 10% of sale proceeds for the development of the game, will distribute the remaining funds among all 18 first-class counties. The eight county Hundred hosts will each receive around £20m later this year.

Non-Hundred franchise hosting counties will receive slightly more than £20m each, as host counties benefit from the commercial revenues generated from staging matches in The Hundred tournament.

Born in Montreal and raised in India, Mr Govil later moved to the US, where his business interests include the tech consulting firm Infinite Computer Solutions and health-tech venture Zyter.

A passionate cricket fan, Mr Govil also owns the Major League Cricket franchise Washington Freedom, which is coached by former Australian cricket captain Ricky Ponting and features players such as Steve Smith and Travis Head. Washington Freedom has a player and coaching partnership with Australian first-class cricket team New South Wales.

Such is the strength of the relationship developed between the parties that Glamorgan unilaterally increased the stake it initially planned to sell (49%) by 1%, creating an equal ownership split with Mr Govil for Welsh Fire.

Glamorgan’s negotiating team, led by its chair and former investment banker Mark Rhydderch-Roberts, chief executive Dan Cherry, and club president Alan Wilkins, presented the i