MUMBAI: Mumbai Indians owners Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) have bought a 49% stake in London’s Oval Invincibles after winning a virtual auction on Thursday.
The Surrey-based team was the first to be sold in the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) equity sale, with MI, the giants of IPL making the winning bid for the Oval franchise in a live three-way auction.
Sky News reported that MI’s bid valued 100% of Oval Invincibles at approximately 125m pounds, which means that RIL paid around 61 million pounds for a 49 per cent stake in the team. The MI owners pipped a group of technology billionaires like Google and Microsoft to bag the Oval franchise in The Hundred.
The Mumbai Indians will now have a significant say in the cricketing governance of the Oval Invincibles team. The Oval Invincibles’ men’s team is captained by England allrounder Sam Curran and includes Gus Atkinson, who is currently touring with the England T20 side in India.
The Invincibles is the sixth team run by RIL, owned by the Ambani family, in global T20 leagues, after Mumbai Indians (in both the IPL and WPL), MI New York (MLC), MI Cape Town (SA20) and MI Emirates (ILT20).
However, the highest bid in the ECB auction is expected to be for The London Spirit franchise – more than £140m, which means that the ECB would stand to net at least £70m. The MCC controls the London Spirit franchise. RIL were actually expected to bid for the London Sprit franchise.
A spokesman for the England and Wales Cricket Board refused to comment on the development. The ECB will sell the stakes of the remaining seven teams over the next week, after which the ECB will make a formal announcement to the media after the bidding process is complete. MI have thus emerged as among the most powerful stakeholders in English cricket.
On Friday, ECB will sell two other counties – the prestigious Lord’s-based London Spirit, which is likely top fetch the highest price after Oval Invincibles, and the Cardiff-based Welsh Fire, for which Capri Global, the owners of UP Warriorz in the Women’s Premier League (WPL) and the Sharjah Warriors in ILT20 in UAE.
At the time of writing this, Birmingham Phoenix was being auctioned on Thursday afternoon (local time) in London.
Sky News reported that the other remaining bidders for London Spirit are a vehicle controlled by Todd Boehly, a shareholder in Chelsea Football Club; members of the Manchester United-owning Glazer family, and the Sanjeev Goenka-owned RPSG Group, who won Lucknow Super Giants in the IPL.
For franchises with only two shortlisted bidders, the auction will involve a straightforward sealed bid shootout.
Host counties are also allowed to sell their 51% shareholdings.
Investors will only be allowed to own a stake in one of the eight teams, which also include Welsh Fire, Southern Brave and the Northern Superchargers.
A bigger-than-expected windfall from the process could offer a financial lifeline to a number of cash-strapped counties. The ECB is confident that windfalls from the Hundred auction will improve the financial sustainability of the counties in the long-term-“for the next 20-25 years”.
The Hundred auction is being conducted by bankers at Raine Group, the same firm which oversaw the sale of large stakes in both Manchester United and Chelsea.