Colin Graves: From £25m in Debt to £15m in the Bank: How The Hundred Saved Yorkshire (Ep126)

0:00We could sit there and do nothing, not being unkind. I could put my coat on, walk out the door and say, right, I've sorted it all out, you've got 15 million quid in the bank, everything's hunky-dory, and walk away from it. I don't want to do that, I want to finish the mission, what I started in 2002, but this is for the good of Yorkshire cricket for the next 50 years. That's why we do it. Don't be fearful of demutualisation, you've been a members club for 160 odd years, but as a members club, we've virtually nearly gone bankrupt twice. I would change test match cricket to four days, the fifth day in a test match.

0:29Everybody loses money. The ground loses money. The broadcaster loses money. It's no good for anybody. We created the 100 where we believe that would be an attractive investment for investors. The total investment for the 100 % if you sold every team, it was nearly a billion pound. Without that, to be honest, that saved the game, certainly for the next 10 years. I went back to Yorkshire in February 2024 and the debts had spiralled up to 25 million again. They even had an Ashes Test match during that time and they still lost money. I still can't get my head around that. If you have an Ashes Test match, you should make between£3 and£5 million net profit.

1:03Full stop.

1:09Hello and welcome to The Business of Sport, the show that takes you behind the scenes with the industry's leading owners, operators and athletes. County cricket, this is long overdue. And if we wanted to do this properly, then there was really only one place to start. So I'm delighted to welcome Colin Graves to the show. Colin has held positions at the top of international and domestic cricket as chair of the ECB and at Yorkshire, a role he was re-elected to in 2024 as the club faces some of the biggest decisions in its storied history. The stark reality is that county cricket needs to make more money, attract more fans, produce more content, open itself to new investment.

1:44The problem is that there are issues at both a macro and a micro level that stop much of that from happening. Private versus member ownership, calendar positioning, fiscal management. how do counties create a business that does more than just survive? This is a compelling take from a man who knows what he's talking about and recognising this is highly emotive to many of you who will be listening. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on it and we're delighted to welcome Colin to The Business of Sport. The Business of Sport is supported by Airwallex, the intelligent financial platform used by more than 200 ,000 modern businesses from SaaS and marketplaces to some of the most ambitious organisations in sport including McLaren Racing, Arsenal and the San Francisco Giants.

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3:38Gemini changes that. It's the mobile first command center that brings everything together. Scout reports, intel, performance information, and now contract intelligence with full budget impact analysis. Drag and drop any contract PDF. The AI automatically extracts salaries, bonuses, sell-on clauses, and projects live financial impact as you evaluate players. See the complete picture. Make better decisions faster from anywhere. Learn more at geminisports.ai and why major clubs across three continents are getting everything they need to win the transfer market all in one place. colin welcome to the business of sports really great to have you in the studio yeah thanks for the invitation and uh looking forward to the chat well me too i you know i know i'm the one that's meant to be hosting this but you know how on earth do we even begin to look at cricket at the moment it is a chaotic landscape uh really from from top to bottom you are in position at yorkshire as chair at the moment tell us a little bit just to give some of the context of the challenges that you're facing?

4:40Yeah, basically, I've been in professional cricket now since 2002 when I first got involved with Yorkshire when they were in financial distress for the first time. And then I got back involved with Yorkshire two years ago, 2024, when again they were in the second financial distress. So that's how I come back involved with them. And yeah, really, I think cricket is an interesting place at the present time. I think there's some massive challenges ahead at all levels in cricket, international cricket, county cricket, one day cricket, whatever you look at it, I think there's going to be a lot of challenges in the next 10 years and I think the whole game has got to look at that very seriously and how we handle that going forward because the way people are digesting cricket and following cricket and watching cricket is changing rapidly and you've only got to look at even test matches in India.

5:35The audiences of test matches in India is dropping. People don't realise that. So we're fortunate in England that test matches, we still sell out grounds when we do have England international matches, which is great. But that might not last forever. That could change if the audience's views and demands change in the future. I didn't realise that test matches were declining in India. That's pretty interesting. Do you think we're in an era of too much? I think the problem that we've got in cricket, you can say it's a problem and you can say it's an opportunity, but I think the audiences, the older audiences, the older audiences like Test Match cricket.

6:17They've been brought up on Test Match cricket. The younger audiences, different lifestyle, different demands. Like one day cricket, you have a result one way or another. It's quick, it's fast, it's entertaining. The younger audiences find test matches very boring. So if you look at the audience at test matches and then compare that with the audience, especially at 100 match, totally different audience altogether. Would you say 32 is young? From where I'm sitting today, yeah. Okay. So I was having a conversation actually with someone yesterday. So I love test match cricket, but I've still, even at 32, I've grown up with it being the primary part of cricket probably for those formative years.

7:01I was watching Tess. If you're talking about the birth or the real birth of franchise cricket from 2007 IPL onwards, it was the moments in the 05 ashes for someone around my generation. But now what we'll start to see very quickly is the first part of the generation that have grown up with the IPL being one of the first things they've watched, with the short form games being one of the first things they've watched. It'll be really interesting to see how they prioritise and want to consume and participate in cricket. And that's the challenge we've got in cricket for the next 10 years, is how do we handle that change?

7:34How do we keep the interest watching Test Match cricket from that younger generation at 32 or even younger? And that is a challenge we've all got. And what would you do? I think the main thing I would do, and I said this 10 years ago, maybe I was ahead of my time, I would change Test Match cricket to four-day from five-day. I think five days is far too long anyway. not many go to five days when you look at it no particularly in england yeah exactly so if you look at four day test match cricket you play 90 overs a day you start at 10 13 in the morning and you make it more um watchable and attractive from a younger generation's point of view so from that point of view i would change it and i think the other thing that we've got to look at in test matches is who's going to play test match cricket going forward because you've seen it over the last two months.

8:26You had New Zealand playing Ireland and you had India playing Afghanistan. Both of those finished within three days and were won by an innings and a lot of runs from a top quality Test match team to a relatively new Test match team. So how many teams are going to be playing Test match cricket in 10 years time? I don't think we'll have as many as we have today because what's the point of playing test match cricket if you've got nobody watching it and you're losing money on staging it so i think all those challenges have got to come through icc and all the countries who play test match cricket and it's about creating the product for the fans but it's also about creating the product that makes sense for business as well because if you have a fifth day that virtually never gets played but you're still selling tickets you're still bringing in all of the food and beverage etc the staffing that you're putting on for a fifth day the fifth day in a test match everybody loses money the ground loses money the broadcaster loses money it's no good for anybody it's the fifth day when you do have a fifth day you virtually let the crowd in for nothing at 10 pound a ticket or something like that just to make sure that you try and fill the ground as much as possible because you never pre-sell the fifth day anyway so from that point of view the fifth day financially is a negative okay so you say you brought that up 10 years ago we joke a lot on the show about the challenge of big change in sports that we would class as traditional if you get pushback like that if things don't change off the back of it is it because there is just a resilience to doing things is it because there's a challenge and shifting the mentality that something that has always been should always be i think there's a time and a place for change and you know when i brought it up 10 years ago we had other challenges at the ECB and within English cricket.

10:14So that at that point in time wasn't paramount. The big change that we looked at then was the 100 of how to bring in a new tournament to attract a new audience which we did all the research and we found that we had a million people each year that watched cricket in one format another. Problem is it was the same million people that just got churned around every year so we weren't attracting new audiences so when we went out and did the research we found out that we didn't have families we didn't have women we didn't have children and we asked the question why aren't you watching cricket and it came back goes on too long difficult to understand the scoreboard etc etc etc so when we came out with a hundred we came out with a a new game that was easy to understand short to format finished in two and a half hours could understand it 100 balls runs wickets and the conversation that's all you need to understand about it and the other big thing we did we got it back on terrestrial television and which helped a hell of a lot with BBC so that was a challenge at the time of how do you attract that new audience and to increase the audience which we did it and we got it through and we succeeded.

11:31What were the responses of the individuals that you spoke to in that type of survey as to why maybe something like the Blast wasn't servicing them in the way the 100 has been able to? Because I think the Blast, it sounds horrible saying this, but it's fact, I think the Blast turned into a male social event where the guys would go out on a Friday night or over a weekend with the mates and guys from work. so it turned into a very social male dominated event not a family event and that's where we lost out on the blast as it was and still is to be honest okay let's talk into the hundred you brought it up and so let's let's have a run with it it's integral to a lot of the stuff that we'll probably link in to the conversation there is the fan product element that you've highlighted now it's easy to say there's also been a very strong business element when you set out how did you position both of those two together was the objective early on to recognize this was a really good chance to inject some much needed capital back into English cricket if it worked yeah it was one of the first things we always said that what the game needed was investment coming into the game and it's it's still there that is still a challenge certainly at county level so from that point of view we created the hundred where we believe that would be an attractive investment for investors to look at it in the future.

12:52How long that would take, we didn't know at that point in time, but we knew it would be attractive to investors. And I remember standing up when we got it through and we launched it, and I said then, in five years' time, we could have investors from India, America, and all the rest of it to look at investing in the hundred. And people laughed at me and said, you must be joking, that's never going to happen. Indians are never going to invest in in the 100 in england and i got slated for you know getting the 100 on the table and coming through but that was our vision in 2017 that was our vision for the 100 how important was it to not sell it at the beginning so you create a new tournament and have investors in from day one how important was it to prove there was value in that product yeah it was very important there's there's no way we won't ever wanted to do that the the plan was always to run it for five years get the audience get the figures get everything up and running get the broadcaster behind us which we did with Sky they've been brilliant and so that was always the plan was five ten years to have something that you can take to market whatever format that looked like.

13:57And for those that challenged it was it the fact that there was already so much cricket they didn't want it to conflict with other formats what were the reasons? Well I think the ones who challenged it virtually were in a very comfortable position with their own clubs and counties. They were profitable, they were successful on the field, they had a good business behind them. So they saw no need to bring anything else to the table. They were happy with what happened. But it was the other counties who were saying, hold on a minute, we need something new, we need something to bring more investment into the game, to bring more capital into the game.

14:33How do we do it? so you know took us two and a half years to get it through but we got there in the end when you say get it through do you mean two and a half years just from idea to approval where you can then go right okay we're going to create the teams start selling the product exactly it was two and a half years from the initial idea which sanjay patel brought to the table with andrew strauss tom harrison and myself sat us down and told us about this idea of the hundred to when we actually got the counties to vote for it because he had to take it to the stakeholders to get it through and get them i think it was 75 majority which we achieved and that was a two and a half year timescale of constantly talking to the stakeholders talking to them to update them where we were all the ideas we were having and we had meeting after meeting after meeting to get over the line So do you think it was literally like Sanjay one day was just like, this is, I've had an idea.

15:30Well, the idea when he presented it to us, I'll never forget it, we were in Spain. We went to look at Desert Springs to look at, do we buy a ground in Desert Springs for going across there in winter? That was where we started off. And Sanjay said, right, Saturday morning, I want to see you at 10 o 'clock. I've got an idea I want to throw at you three. and he got a room in the hotel he presented this new idea of the 100 to us i'll never get we all looked at each other and said really how does that work and slowly bit by bit for three months he then virtually put some flesh on the bones of what it looked like and how it would work etc and yeah we all signed into it very quickly in that first conversation was there a change in format yes i.e.

16:18shorter overs. Yes. It was. Okay, so wow. So right from the word go, that was a key driver. From day one, it was 100 balls. And it was not six ball overs from day one. That never changed. I can imagine you guys sitting there going, We all said, well, how does that fit in with the averages? How does that fit in with your career record and all that sort of stuff, et cetera, which is, that's the first thing a cricketer thinks about. And he said, don't worry about all that. We'll get all that sorted, et cetera. and we'll make it work and we'll fit it in with MCC laws and regulations, et cetera. And yeah, we did all that.

16:52But yeah, he never changed it from day one. Okay, so you get it through. We now see the real value of it. We see it being a really good product where if you're a cricketing purist, you still get people pushing back on it. I still have them. And then generally most of them, do you know what's interesting? I say, have you been? No. So, well, go and experience it because fine, it may not be what you've grown up with, but it's an amazing atmosphere. and I said it on something the other week I was at a blast game 24th of May you know one of the the first ones virtually no one there yeah apart from the MCC members yeah sitting in their area virtually no one there yeah and last year going to some of the 100 games it was great really good well that's one thing that we have seen change is that they do like the shorter format they don't like it going on for too long that new audience has arrived the families the women the children etc and the old we used to call them pale male and stale traditional cricket supporters are not there because they've never even looked at a lot of them.

17:55I don't like it. The first reaction is I don't like it. Why don't you like it? Well, it's not cricket, is it? That's the first reaction you get from a traditional cricket supporter. It's not cricket. It's not proper cricket. Of course, it's cricket. No, it's not. So that's the thing which we always said from Square One, traditional cricket members we believe will not go and watch the 100 and we've proved that and you don't care because really what we're looking at doing is broadening the whole point of this was to broaden yeah the reach of the game yeah and it's it's worked yeah so products worked tell us how important it's been financially well again financially if you look at the figures that were brought in last year surprised everybody surprised me so you know it was incredible when you look at, if you like, the total investment for the 100 % if you sold every team, it was nearly a billion pounds, which is phenomenal.

18:47So to get 49 % in of 500 million pounds, without that, to be honest, that saved the game, certainly for the next 10 years. What we've got to do is make sure, and the game's got to do it, as well as the governing body, we've got to make sure we don't waste it. we look at how we use that and majority like we have at yorkshire firstly we paid down our debt it's allowed us to pay down all our debt so we have no debt now that saves us one and a half million pounds interest per year so the investment that's come into the game through the hundred is phenomenal yeah you would not have got that from any other angle shape or format so from that point view it's been a savior it's given more money to the recreational game because 10 of everything that came in was always designated to go to the recreational game so that's going to help the recreational game over the next 10 years so it's been a godsend to be honest so it's allowed the clubs to look up what they've got what they want to do how they want to use that um the big my big fear going forward is that we don't have a wage inflation because of the money that's come into the game.

20:00And I think that's got to be handled and managed properly. But if we're looking at the biggest challenge, for example, that EFL's had with the Premier League trying to get more money off this, because the Premier League will say, yeah, but if we give more money, it's just going to get put on wages. It's not going to be siphoned off for the things that are going to help you develop as a business, which is always a fair comeback, but ironic because they spend equally lavishly on exactly the same things. To stop that from happening here when you have a chance to do that before it's actually got going, how was that money segmented?

20:30What has been classed as a good investment and what has been classed as you're not allowed to use that money? Well, the ECB has put in some controls now that for you to access your share of the 49%, you've got to give a business plan to the ECB of how you're going to spend your money. are you going to pay down debt are you going to invest in a newsstand are you going to do this are you going to do that etc and the one thing about cricket at the present time we have got a salary cap so that controls the salary cap of the county as a whole which is good um but i'm sure the pca is going to be knocking on the door going forward and saying hold on a minute you've got a lot more money we need a bit more of it which i understand that no issues with that provided it don't rock it and go out with the stratosphere basically.

21:18But also provided you make more money, right? Yeah, because that's another thing. Just because you get a lot more money coming in, it doesn't mean to say you're going to make more money at the bottom line going forward if you don't spend it wisely. Your operating costs can soon shoot through the roof if you're not careful and saying, yeah, I'll have this body, I'll have that body, I'll do this, I'll do that. And by the time you're finished, you end up losing money. So you've got to be very, very, very careful with your business plan of how you're going to run the club and the county going forward.

21:47Yeah. How important and difficult was it in those first stages where creating the business plan, you incentivized 18 counties, not just eight who had a franchise attached to them? Because that as a challenge, I'd imagine, was probably one of the hardest to do to ensure that those that didn't have it also benefited financially. Well, how we structured it going forward, and this is one thing which I was always a firm believer, was we said to all the counties, all 18, plus MCC, so there was 19 shareholders, we said with this new tournament, we would guarantee you a lump sum every year from this new tournament, which off the top of my head I think is one and a half million a year.

22:29would guarantee you that extra money. And that swayed a lot of them straight away because you were giving them one and a half million unfettered per year in their income streams. That convinced a lot of them. And can we just put that into context? Because again, I think in sport, we often get pretty careless with our numbers and money suddenly doesn't mean a huge amount. I mean, one and a half million for a lot of the counties is a huge amount of money, right? we're talking about big levels of it was saving grace for about six of them to be honest because they were so close to you know going under some to be honest so yeah that that was a big incentive for a lot of the others in the middle um it was nice to have for the big ones at the top it didn't matter because one and a half million to ones who were doing 20 30 40 million pounds revenue per year it didn't really matter uh it was nice to have but it wasn't the be-all and end-all so yeah we pitched it what we thought was right to make it attractive for the counties to vote for it and to help them survive in the future okay can we then use this as a seamless transition into yorkshire and how you have uniquely in the context of the other counties approached the sales process, selling 100 % of your stake, and identified that cash and recognized how you can put it most to use to secure the future as far as you can of the county, which, as you said to me just before, was absolutely essential.

24:02Yeah, we looked at it. I went back to Yorkshire in February 2024, and the debts had spiraled up to£25 million pounds again they got it down to 15 million in 2020 so in four years it has spiraled by 10 million pounds of the debt how good question um mismanagement cost of the racism scandal that fell on yorkshire in 2020 21 that cost yorkshire a hell of a lot of money on legal fees compensation for people who got made redundant and lost the jobs there was a lot of poor decisions made in yorkshire over those two three years which cost the county a lot of money they even had a an ashes test match during that time and they still lost money that i still can't get mad around that and historically that wouldn't have been the case if you have an ashes test match you should make between three and five million pounds net profit a year full stop Yorkshire and Ash's test match in 23 I think it was and they lost three million pounds so that's that's the poor decisions that were made running the club so when I went back there we had debts of 25 million pounds so when the idea of selling stakes in the 100 came along as I said that was always our intention when we launched it then yes it was it was like a saviour to us at Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

25:38So we looked at it and we thought what kind of value are we going to get when we started this process off with RAINN and with ECB and people were talking about the most you're going to get for 100 % is going to be 20-30 million. Really? If you're lucky. On a good day you might get 20-30 million so we looked at it and said fine that's great if we have our 51 % then that'll give us 10 million so we'll be able to knock that off the debt so we're in a better position so that's where we started off in December 24. Sandi and myself looked at it and then we got the board together and said right this is possibly where we can go if we get those kind of figures and all the board were that were the same idea if we can get an opportunity to get income coming in at that kind of level we've never had it before in Yorkshire it'll get us out the mire that we are in so we took the decision then before we knew the final figures that we would sell our 51 % stake so we went along with that the board were happy with that we're all going in the right direction and of course then you know the whole process started and the figures just kept going up and up and up and I'll never forget the day when the auction happened for Northern Superchargers.

26:58I was in Barbados, funnily enough, on holiday and Sanjay was over in the UK. I got up at four o 'clock in the morning to go through the whole process and when we ended up at 100.5 million for the Northern Superchargers, I think we just pinched ourselves and just said this is unbelievable because the one thing it gave us was it gave us financial stability because we sold our full 51 percent nobody else did and we did that for two reasons one is allowed us to pay our debt off the 25 million so that went overnight saved us one and a half million pounds interest operating costs and it gave us some money to putting the bank behind us we've never been in that position before ever in 165 years so So we were able to bring our creditors up today, which again, they hadn't been able to do that for the last four years.

27:54Everybody got paid up today. We had some money to invest in facilities in the ground. The groundsman got a new lawnmower and everything else that he needed. All that. It was nice to be able to say, we're in a good position. And that's where we are now, where we sat there. We've got 15 million pounds as an investments, which we've set up as an investment company underneath as a subsidiary within the club. And we're now looking at it and saying, right, what do we need for the future? And that's where we've launched our 10-year plan. And this is what it's allowed us to do. If we haven't had done that, we couldn't have been where we are today.

28:30So we've now launched a 10-year plan of what Yorkshire and Headingley could look like, should look like, but how do we get there? Because to do all that, we need£100 million. pounds so is this right i'm going to open the uh the box of demutualization and allow you to give a little bit of an explanation before i botch it yeah i think the big thing about demutualization and a lot of people uh and i've been talking to the members over the last 12 months about this is don't be fearful of demutualization you've been a members club for 160 odd years 170 years and we are where we are today as a members club but as a members club we've virtually nearly gone bankrupt twice because the one thing with members clubs is very difficult if not impossible to get investment into a members club and the members are not the kind of members who can put their hand in the pocket and find your 30 million pounds overnight like you do if you're an MCC member so you can't compare it with that so as a members club you're limited to what you can borrow and And therefore, if you want to invest in the ground, which we need to do at Headingley, it's okay as it is.

29:45But the vision for the next 10 years is what can it be? And this is what we're saying to the members. Look to the future, not where you are today. Do you want Headingley to be a 25 ,000, all-seater, brand-new stadium, new facilities, new changing rooms, new hospitality, new entrance, all singing, all dancing ground that will compete with anybody in the world. And you as members would have access to all that. We're going to take nothing away from you whatsoever. Nothing. So all your rights as a member will be protected. In fact, going forward, we'll even give you shares in the new company. So there's an upside.

30:25So from that point of view, what we're saying to you as a member is we're taking nothing away from you. We're going to give you shares in the new company and we're going to make sure that we get this investment into the club to protect both the ground and the club for the future. And if we do that, then Yorkshire should remain at the top of the tree, both on the pitch and off the pitch. And that's the message we're putting across to the members of why we need to do it. We could sit there and do nothing. I'm not being unkind. I could put my coat on, walk out the door and say, right i've sorted it all out you've got 15 million quid in the bank everything's hunky dory and walk away from it i don't want to do that i've got i want to finish the mission what i started in 2002 so that's one of the things i want to do but i'm doing it for the good of the membership going forward i'm not doing it for the good of me because i don't make anything out of it i don't want to make anything out of it but this is for the good of yorkshire cricket for the next 50 years and that's why we're doing it.

31:29And how has the process gone so far? Because it's been talked about for a couple of years, if I'm correct, right? So how's it going with the members and their understanding of this and the recognition that it's actually so closely tied to the future of the club? Yeah, we started this off a year ago around about the time we were selling the 100 stake. And so we started talking to members then about the future and what we need to do. We launched our 10-year strategy in April this year. Sanjay put together a presentation for our members and we had 200 odd members who came to Headingley and we presented them our 10-year strategy of what Yorkshire could and should look like.

32:13And then we followed that through at the AGM in May about talking about demutalisation and what it would look like and how it would evolve. so we've started the process off we're talking to the FCA to make sure we do everything legal and properly and all the rest of it to change it from a members club to a limited company we've got opposition yeah there's people who don't like it and saying you shouldn't be doing it we want to stay a members club etc etc if that's what they want then fine if that's what the vote when it comes to a vote if that's the way they want to leave it then fine stay as you are but if you stay as you are in 10 years time realise where you will be in the set up of English cricket because you're not going to be one of the big grounds like Edgerton, Old Trafford, Lords and the Oval who's got 25 ,000 plus brand new stadiums.

33:08We're not going to be in that league. So if you want to be in that league, you've got to investigate in that league and the only way you get the investment is change it to a limited company. so am i right in saying this current five-year cycle of test allocation you said there are three years where headingley doesn't have a test yeah we in fact sad to say really when this alley when i got there in 24 and i looked at the allocation out of five years three years we don't have a test match well if we don't have a test match that is a minus one and a half million pounds per year on our P &L, which is horrendous.

33:44Without the 100 money, if we'd have carried on with no 100 money and the allocation we had, we would have been going bust in 29. Again, that's how important the allocation system is from English cricket's point of view and from Yorkshire's point of view. And that's one thing which I believe has gone a bit astray. Your next year, 2027, we haven't got an Ashes Test match in the north of England, which I think is criminal to be honest. Yorkshire alone, people won't realise this, on a Saturday in Yorkshire, there are more people playing recreational cricket than the whole of Australia together. That's how big cricket is in Yorkshire.