Rod Bransgrove, Hampshire’s chairman, has hailed a “landmark” £120m deal to sell the club to the co-owners of the Indian Premier League’s Delhi Capitals and has predicted other counties will follow suit.
The deal makes GMR Group the first overseas owners of an English county cricket team. Bransgrove is confident they will not be the last. “This is a landmark occasion in English cricket,” he said. “But I don’t think I’ll be the last person to do it. And I think it’s going to be very good for Hampshire cricket, as, ultimately, private ownership has been to the game at large.”
GMR have taken an immediate majority stake in Hampshire county cricket club and the Utilita Bowl stadium, as well as the nearby Hilton hotel and golf course, with a view to completing a “phased takeover” in the next two years. Bransgrove also confirmed that GMR were interested in taking full charge of the Southern Brave, the Hundred team who play at the same venue. Hampshire are set to own 51% but Bransgrove said they were looking at purchasing the remaining 49% stake from the England and Wales Cricket Board.
Bransgrove, who will stay as group chairman for at least another two years as part of the deal, said the move would help the club to “benefit from the proliferation of cricket around the globe in the short franchise format”. He said: “Already, although I can’t disclose where, it’s likely that we will participate in an overseas franchise competition in November, which otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to without GMR. So I think it’s just a great opportunity all around.”
Bransgrove also dismissed concerns from traditionalists about what the deal might say about the state of English cricket. “This country in particular is quite resistant to change,” he said.
“It’s quite a traditional country. In fact, we resent change, and some people will tend to blame the Hundred for every single thing that goes wrong in their lives. My view is that clever businesses recognise the trends and position themselves to be able to exploit the trends to the benefit of their business. And that’s what I’m seeking to do here.
“You can’t stop a good businessman from wanting to drive the value of his business. And what we’ve taken is a busted flush, a county cricket club out of business with a half-built ground, and we’ve created an organisation which has an enterprise value of something approaching £120m. I don’t think there’s any downside to that. There are no losers. And I’m absolutely certain that we will not be the last to go down this route.”
Grandhi Kiran Kumar, corporate chairman of GMR Group, said he was delighted that Hampshire had joined a sporting portfolio that includes a 50% stake in the IPL’s Delhi Capitals, the Dubai Capitals in the UAE’s ILT20, and the Seattle Orcas in Major League Cricket in the US.
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