ECB chief executive Richard Gould thinks cricket can “muscle in” on football as he plots how to grow the domestic game with millions set to be raked in from the sale of the eight Hundred franchises.

The Hundred as a whole was valued at close to £1bn and if all the agreed deals end up going through, £520m will be injected into the professional and recreational set-up.

Successful bidders during the auction included Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly (Trent Rockets) and Knighthead Capital (Birmingham Phoenix), the latter of which owns League One club Birmingham City and has NFL legend Tom Brady as a minority investor.

The 2025 edition of The Hundred runs from August 5-31, live on Sky Sports, with the London Spirit vs Oval Invincibles double header kicking off the season.

Gould told Sky Sports News‘ James Cole: “I think it’s time for us to muscle in on football, that’s one of our ambitions. When you look at the share of either broadcast revenue or attendees, we want to increase our market share. We’ve got football in our sights.”

He added during an ECB media briefing about The Hundred sales: “The most important thing for live sport is to have great attendances. We want big, vibrant stadiums full of cricket supporters and families coming to watch games.

“We need to make sure The Hundred window attracts the very best players in the world. We know that players’ salaries will increase significantly in future years.

“That is going to happen because we need to make sure that we are the leaders in a global market during the English summer.”

Gould: Hundred windfall ‘at top end of our hopes’

Gould admitted the financial influx was at “the top end of our hopes” with the biggest outlay the £145m tech-based consortium Cricket Investor Holdings Limited, headed by Nikesh Arora, forked out for 49 per cent of the Lord’s-based London Spirit.

The former Surrey CEO stressed that the money raised would be “invested not spent” in order to safeguard English cricket for “generations to come”, and has no concerns about any of the financiers coming in, saying they have extensive track records.

He told Sky Sports News: “Sometimes there’s expensive debt that’s been incurred over years that can get paid down.

“But most of it will go into player pathways, into stadium facilities, business away from cricket. Lots of hotels, conference centres, sort of non-matchday cricket.

“We don’t want to spend this money. We want to invest it and make sure that it lasts us for generations to come, whilst building a bigger and stronger sport.

“You only have to look at the investor group that’s coming in. You will know all of them. They all have amazing reputations, amazing track records, both with what they’ve done in their professional lives and in other sports.

“We know that we’re in good hands with them. And I hope that they understand they’re in good hands with us. We’re going to collaborate and work really well together.”

“It’s certainly a really important opportunity for us in history.

“I think we’ll judge how important it ranks but we want to make sure that we can match and exceed the investors’ ambitions and take the game forward to levels that it hasn’t been before.”

What have the Sky Sports pundits said?

Michael Atherton on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast:

“These are incredible, irrational sums and it is hard to envisage how [these buyers and investors] will get that back in the near term – and that is the worry really.

“In order to get it back they may have to think about expanding The Hundred, playing more games, raising ticket prices.

“There is clearly a lot of uncertainty down the line but I can’t see anything but a clash at some point.”

Nasser Hussain on the Sky Sports Cricket Podcast:

“Make no mistake, English cricket needs this money to survive. It is game-changing for some counties, it is going to save some counties and help some of the bigger counties who have debt.

“My underlying feeling is that it is good for English cricket but we need to be really switched on.

“The future, for me, is pretty dull if it is all about franchise cricket and people just follow the money. Cricket is about more than money, it is about caring and connection.”

Watch the 2025 edition of The Hundred live in full on Sky Sports from August 5-31, or stream no contract with NOW.