Late last year, Nikesh Arora, billionaire CEO of cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks, was hanging out in his California home with his friend, vice chairman of Indian tech conglomerate Times Internet, Satyan Gajwani, when the pair got to talking about cricket. Gajwani is a co-founder of Major League Cricket, a US league that launched in 2023. Arora has a stake in one of its teams. They were discussing ways to grow the business when Gajwani mentioned another upstart tournament, which had just begun looking for capital on the other side of the Atlantic. They called some more friends: Satya Nadella, Microsoft Inc.’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, the head of Google parent Alphabet Inc., and Shantanu Narayen, who runs Adobe Inc.

Less than three months later, the five giants of the tech world are part of a consortium that has stumped up £147 million ($182 million) for a 49% share of London Spirit, a four-year-old franchise in The Hundred, a startup league in England and Wales. The league’s organizers hope to revive the fortunes of a sport whose popularity has dwindled, and reinvent it for the social media era. The Hundred has collectively raised more than £520 million from investors hoping to emulate the success of the big-money Indian Premier League (IPL), a $30 billion global brand.

“The value of well-run sports franchises has been on a tear, whether it’s the NBA, NFL, Formula One. There’s now a women’s NBA league that’s also done well,” Arora said in an interview. “If you can organize it right and set the frameworks right and make it engaging and enjoyable to the fans, there’s an opportunity economically.”

English cricket is sometimes viewed as a stuffy sport that clings to tradition. Until 1999, Queen Elizabeth II was the only woman allowed into the pavilion at Lord’s cricket ground during play. Even now, men must still wear a tie or cravat to get in. The traditional domestic competition, played between county teams with games that can last four days and still end in a tie, has been in decline for years. Most games are no longer broadcast on live television, and are simply streamed online by the counties for free — although international matches, which can last up to five days, still attract strong audiences and high ticket prices.

To keep the sport alive, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), its governing body, has experimented with shorter-form versions, the most successful of which has been T20, where each team faces 20 overs — that is, 120 pitches of the ball. The format incentivizes more aggressive play and is usually over in less than four hours. Add to that a “more glamorous entertainment sell,” and you have a sport more likely to appeal to a younger demographic, says Dan Plumley, a sports finance lecturer at Sheffield Hallam University.The IPL, which launched in 2008, has honed the format to great effect, amping up the spectacle with cheerleaders, bursts of flames and blasting music. The league has become a behemoth in the sport, attracting its best players and billions of dollars in advertising and TV and streaming rights.The ECB launched its own T20 league, The Blast, in 2003, but it struggled for traction. In 2021, the ECB tried again with The Hundred, an even shorter format. Each side faces 100 balls per game. Women’s and men’s teams play on the same day, broadcasters explain the basics of the game to newcomers in simple terms and there’s live music between matches.

Early indications were strong. The ECB signed broadcast deals with Sky Sports and the BBC, as well as a multimillion pound sponsorship agreement with food producer KP Snacks.

The Hundred soon began to attract attention from private equity investors, but the ECB’s need to retain governance rights over the league prevented a deal from being struck, according to Vikram Banerjee, the organization’s director of business operations. Rivals took note too. Last year, IPL founder Lalit Modi offered the ECB $1 billion to host an alternative competition to The Hundred, essentially asking the board to give up on their project.

Modi’s approach, which the ECB rebuffed, spurred the organization to hire the investment bank Raine Group and consultants from Deloitte to figure out ways to cash in on the format. Their solution was to hand each of the eight venues that host the teams a 51% stake in their local franchise and put the remaining 49% up for sale.

The ECB’s promotional material talked up a “rare opportunity to invest in the birthplace of cricket.” The reality is perhaps more prosaic. The team names and kits, invented for the new league, can be changed, and investors wouldn’t be buying a county club — most of which are still owned by their members — simply a team that uses the ground for a few weeks per year.

But when the first round of bidding opened in September, more than 100 investors, including private equity companies, US sports investment groups and IPL franchise owners expressed an interest in buying a stake, the ECB said. That was whittled down to 35 potential investors, from which host venues chose a shortlist. The remaining suitors then bid for one or more franchise in live auctions, with bids rising every 15 minutes in increments of at least £3 million.

The first franchise to sell, on Jan. 30, was Oval Invincibles, one of the two London clubs on offer. India’s billionaire Ambani family, which also owns the Mumbai Indians IPL team, bought a 49% stake, valuing it at just over £120 million. Later that day, Knighthead Capital, a fund backed by NFL legend Tom Brady, bought a stake in Birmingham Phoenix at a £80 million valuation.

But it was the London Spirit auction the following day that really set the process alight. The franchise plays its home matches at Lord’s, often referred to as the “home of cricket.” Bidding went on for hours, pitting Arora’s group against rivals that included Todd Boehly, co-owner of Chelsea FC soccer club, the LA Lakers basketball team and the LA Dodgers baseball franchise.

Arora’s consortium by now included Johann Rupert, the billionaire controlling shareholder of Cartier owner Richemont, as well as Jim Goetz, a partner at Sequoia, and Egon Durban of Silver Lake Capital, a backer of UFC, Manchester City football club and the New Zealand rugby team. They stuck with it as the price rose far above its early estimates. It was “hard for all of us collectively to let go,” Arora said.

The eventual price for their stake valued London Spirit at £295 million. Over the next two weeks, several IPL owners, including Sanjiv Goenka’s RPSG conglomerate, the industrial multinational Sun Group, and the infrastructure company GMR Group, snapped up stakes. Boehly, through the Cain International vehicle that he set up with British businessman Jonathan Goldstein, paid just under £40 million for a stake in Nottingham’s Trent Rockets. The auctions put a combined valuation of £975 million on the franchises, although the winners are now in exclusive talks with their potential partners, meaning it’s not a done deal yet. The bidders could still try to lower the price, or deals could fall apart.

The ECB plans on investing the proceeds into the county game, and into grassroots cricket. Some observers are skeptical that the injection of capital will be enough to reverse the decline. “There is no guarantee that simply bringing in investment is going to solve all ills,” Trevor Watkins, head of sports at law firm Pinsent Mason, said. “Indeed, it may only potentially act as a sticking plaster on issues that exist.”

As for The Hundred, the ECB said it expects the tournament’s revenue to reach £145 million in 2030, three times its current level. More than half of that is forecast to come from domestic TV rights.

The league’s long-term prospects may depend on whether it can build an audience beyond England and Wales. The fastest way to achieve that would be to attract the sport’s top players, most of whom play in the IPL. The ECB’s Banerjee said that the league isn’t depending on bringing Indian talent across. The organization has arranged The Hundred’s schedule so it doesn’t overlap with the IPL, but it will still need to convince Indian cricket’s governing body to release its male players, who are currently restricted from playing overseas.

“We know part of this is about opening up the broadcast market overseas and India is a big part of that,” Plumley said. “It’s absolutely valid for the ECB to say they can do well without them, but also the other side of the argument is it’s probably better with them.”

Arora said that it will be five to 10 years before it’s clear whether he and his consortium got a good deal on London Spirit.

“If this is successful and we can get it to rival the success of the IPL and build something amazing for the English cricket fanbase and perhaps a global cricket fanbase, then we paid a very good price,” he said. “If it doesn’t succeed collectively, then we possibly paid more than we should have.”

But, he said, he and his colleagues have brought more than just money to the game. “Sundar has one of the largest streaming properties as part of YouTube; Shantanu runs one of the world’s biggest creative technology platforms in Adobe; Egon owns $80 billion of sport franchises. We have so many different capabilities that can be brought to bear.”