Manchester United co-owners the Glazer family, excluding Joel, are reportedly interested in purchasing shares in the cricket league The Hundred.
The Hundred was introduced as an alternative to the popular T20 Blast in 2021. Its goal was to try and increase the popularity of the sport by introducing new teams independent of the counties and ditching some of the more traditional rules associated with cricket.
The Telegraph reports that the ECB have been receiving bids from several parties last week for their eight teams in the league. It is claimed the ECB is are ‘delighted’ with the level of demand with The Hundred now valued at more than a whopping £650m.
The report adds that it is not known which team the Glazers are interested in purchasing but they may feel confident about completing a deal on one of The Hundred’s squads considering Raine Group, who helped with the process of selling a minority stake in United, are involved with this sale too. The Telegraph reports that more than 100 bids have been submitted in the first round of bidding, which ended last Friday.
The largest bid is said to have been tabled by Indian billionaires the Ambani family who are understood to value London Spirit, who are based at Lord’s, at £140m. The valuation at present is for 100 per cent of the teams but it is not necessarily the case that the ECB will sell 100 per cent of their clubs.
That being said, they will sell at least 49 per cent of each of their teams according to the report. The Glazers’ interest in The Hundred comes after they took a step back from day-to-day football operations at United at the beginning of the year.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe’s investment in United was rubber-stamped on Christmas Eve following a 13-month process on the back of the Glazer family announcing “a strategic review” to their ownership in November 2022.
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