Belinda Moore: The Growth Director at the Hundred on a new dawn for short form cricket

0:03Belinda Moore:Hello and welcome to Leaders Worth Knowing, the sports industry show from Leaders where we talk to the people worth knowing in the sports industry this week. My name is James Emmett. I'm the editorial director here at Leaders and my guest today is Belinda Moore who recently became the growth director at The 100, which is part of the ECB. Now, I've been trying to get Belinda on the podcast for actually for many years. So since she worked at the European Tour, now the DP World Tour back in, I would suggest, about 2018. and although she denies it in the conversation, I do have a paper trail to back this up.

0:54Belinda Moore:Now, great to have Belinda on the show in what is a relatively new position for her. She joined the ECB as Growth Director of the 100 in March slash April this year, 2026, and she's done four months in the role now. We spoke halfway through the 2026 edition of the four-week short-form cricket tournament, which is in its sixth year. Difficult to believe that the 100 is now in its sixth year, no longer a novelty. And this, as Belinda explains, is something of a reset season for the 100. Fresh from selling off stakes in all eight competing teams, the ECB generated more than£500 million from a sales process that brought in investors from all parts of the world into the league.

1:56Belinda Moore:So plenty of IPL teams coming in to invest in teams in London, Leeds, Manchester, but also investment groups, tech entrepreneurs coming in to boost the coffers of cricket in the UK, but make it a more complicated and vibrant stakeholder environment in the 100 for people like Belinda to have to deal with. Now, the conversation covers quite a lot of the commercial talking points around the 100, as you might imagine from Belinda's perspective, and the role covers all aspects of what could be considered growth at the cricket tournament. But we focus predominantly on sponsorship, on reach and revenue, bums on seats, viewers and the sponsorship proposition.

2:55Belinda Moore:Belinda herself has had a long and varied career in sport. She most recently was the head of women's rugby at the Welsh Rugby Union, a position that she joined having done a stint as chief executive of premiership women's rugby the pwr and before that as i mentioned she worked for five and a half years at the european tour slash dp world tour she's also done a stint agency side at mongoose sports and entertainment and fast track before that and before that she was head of athlete engagement at Team GB, the BOA for the London Olympics. And she started her career as a producer at the BBC. So halfway through The 100, the 2026 edition of The 100, this is The 100's growth director, Belinda Moore.

3:55Belinda Moore:Belinda Moore, growth director, is that right? That is right. At The 100. um belinda thank you very much for being there thank you for trotting down the hill in wimbledon to that makes it sound like i live in the village and i very much don't so careful you've just told me what you've just told me where you live and it is in a definitively nice bit of wimbledon although you say it wasn't so nice when you moved well we've been there 20 years so uh yes it's um it's changed a lot in that time okay um it strikes me that the growth director as a job title we'll get into the nuts and bolts of exactly what it is that you do but which it's a relatively new term, I think.

4:31Belinda Moore:Have you ever been a growth director before? No, no, I've had a number of job titles, but no growth director was new. But actually, I think it makes a lot of sense. You know, if you look at it, it's growth in its broadest sense. So it's commercial, it's marketing, it's fan and digital, but actually all those things are intrinsically interlinked with each other. So actually, I think having now stepped into this role and I'm still, you know, in that sort of honeymoon period, you know, I think it makes a lot of sense. Yeah. Yeah. Interestingly, so the honeymoon period, you are four months into the role and you're midway through your first insider's experience of The 100.

5:11Belinda Moore:What's it like inside The 100 HQ right now? Is there an HQ for The 100? Do you have separate offices? Where are you all sort of dotted around the country? So normally, outside of tournament time, the main office is at Lord's in ECB offices, but actually we have staff. based up at Edgbaston, we have staff based up at Headingley and across the country. So the great thing about cricket is with the number of what I call regional offices that allows people to be based close to where home is. But during tournament time, it's fair to say everyone is pretty much everywhere. So we do 68 matches in 27 days, which is a lot.

5:48But also, you know, we've got two weeks in now and it's been brilliant. I've loved it. I've spent a lot of time on trains. But no, it's been really fun.

5:58Belinda Moore:and it's it's an amazing tournament yeah you know um i thought it's interesting you said you're still in the honeymoon period because it seems to me that when someone starts a new role and the main thing about their new role especially if it's in events if the if the major event happens at the beginning of their tenure everybody says um oh it's just a you know it's just a watching brief for the net you know for the duration of this tournament i'm just here to listen and learn as much as possible and I sort of thought four months is a bit dodgy for you like maybe maybe you would actually have some responsibility to get something done um for but I'm glad to hear that you're in the honeymoon period so are you listening learning watching I think it's always going to be a combination of both is the honest answer to that um I'm probably not the sort of person just happily stands on the sidelines while everybody else gets stuck in so no I'm I'm getting stuck in where I can be helpful where I can add value given that yeah you know a lot of the brilliant planning had been done prior to my joining so it's just supporting the team as much as possible um it's a lot of whatsapp you'd be unsurprised to know how many groups how many professional groups are you in oh god um actually no not that many i think i'm probably more groups for women's rugby club than i am for um from and all the kids sports stuff probably takes up more of my phone a lot of the time but um yeah there's a few there's a few uh okay then um what have been your major observations having done a few weeks of your first tournament now from the inside what yeah what have you noticed that you wouldn't necessarily have noticed before what has surprised you delighted you worried you and what have you seen look i think first and foremost the reason i took the role is it is a brilliant tournament you know i spent a lot of time before i took this role being in rooms where people spend a lot of time talking about how do we do the 100 and as we all know there have been all sorts of attempts to do shorter forms or different forms of lots of sports and not many of them have been very successful and this is a fantastic story of success and also success has brought you know huge stability to a governing body you know in a way that most governing bodies would dream about um about doing so i think i think it's i think it's incredibly clever i also think the other brilliant thing we've seen particularly this weekend is what it's done to grow the women's game you know everything that Beth Barrett well put in play I think is you know is coming through in spades after you know a really impressive um world cup we just had as well but you know we had 17 and a half thousand in for the women's game at Lourdes which is a record for a women's game and and across the weekend you know 50 ,000 just over 50 ,000 people um attended a women's game um which is you know huge numbers um and and I think testament to what a lot of people have done so that's been great to see from you know my background coming from women's support has been really, really positive.

8:48And just seeing it in real life, I suppose, behind the scenes and all the work that goes into it, you know, and the joy of the fans. You know, you get the train back afterwards, you're just listening to people that sort of overheard on the tube type thing, you know, of families having had a brilliant day out that probably hasn't broken the bank that's allowed them to spend some time together watching, you know, really high-quality sports.

9:10Belinda Moore:Yeah. Explain the role then, will you? um what what are your objectives what does success look like for a for a growth director um and you know what have you spent the first four months doing i think it goes back to what you said earlier a lot of it you know um getting stuck in a side has been just trying to understand the business you know it's it's it's a transition year because obviously we've sold the eight teams so it's been a lot of new space for the for the core team as well you know up until this point they had delivered everything for the tournament that's changed this year it's been helping to to guide those teams on that journey and and they're all really different you know we've got IPL team owners in there we've got the tech titans we've got you know a real interesting mix of of investors and they will bring lots of different strengths to it so getting that to to work as a collective is is is really interesting it's gonna be fascinating as we go into the future i think growth happens as we talked about on lots of different levels um you know obviously the the obvious ones the commercial one is always going to be key and that commercial growth comes in different ways you know whether that's bums on seats whether that's broadcast deals lots of different sponsorship deals lots of different ways of doing that but also actually fundamentally to get all that growth to happen part of it is you need to grow your fans and and that fan base and And that's about strengthening the proposition.

10:35And I think, as I said, the proposition that underpins the 100 is fantastic. What I think we probably need to start looking at now going forward is we're six years in now. What does that proposition look like as it stops being the new event and starts to sort of settle into that more sort of a regular part of your summer that you know is coming every year? There's Wimbledon, there's the Open Gulf, there's the 100. You know, so it becomes part of everyone's narrative for a summer.

11:04Belinda Moore:Go a bit deeper, if you will, on where the role sits within the organisation. So the 100 organisations, still part of the ECB, and the stakeholder environment in which you're operating includes now eight independent teams. And who else has to feed into it? How does it all work? Well, I think we're sort of a separate but connected part of the ECB is probably the best way of describing it. So we have our own MD in Vic and we have a really good team, a core team that work primarily on the 100. Some of those have other responsibilities to other bits of cricket, which is always useful because everything you learn from the other bits of the sport is really helpful.

11:51So, but yeah, as I said, you know, you've got this investor group, obviously working really closely with the wider ECB, whether that's with Reece or with Arty or with others. So I think it's about making sure all those relationships work really strongly and really well.

12:07Belinda Moore:It strikes me that this is a more ostensibly commercial role. What was the process like for getting the job? What attracted you to it? from what? That sounds like that multi, you know, Carolina Heard and Crook Hill. What's the track? The multi-millionaire. Well, clearly it was the salary mille. Yeah, obviously. Absolutely, yes. Working in governing bodies is a way to make millions and not. I'd always said when I took the role in Wales, it was interim. That was a realistic piece. My family are based up in England and I was down there two or three days a week. But if I was going to take that role on full time, I'd wanted to have been living in Wales and it just isn't for all sorts of family reasons possible to do.

12:51So it was only ever as an interim role to try and provide some stability after the independent review. And I've now handed that role over to Nadine Griffiths, who's brilliant, and will take that forward. So I think after we'd done the World Cup, it was then a question of what does next look like? And I was very conscious not to try and rush into the first thing. I've obviously had lots of conversations with people about various things. But I think, as I said, The 100 has been one of those properties that everyone talks about. You know, it has achieved something that pretty much nothing else has achieved in the same way.

13:21And the opportunity to be part of that story, particularly in the second era, if you like, of the 100, was just enormously exciting. And, you know, like all good processes and all good governing bodies, it took a while. But yeah, it felt like a really exciting challenge. And I think moving into a sport where there's equal parity was also really attractive. You know, I spent the last three and a half, almost four years working women's sport, which has been amazing. But as anybody you've had on here will tell you, it's really tough. It's really, really tough. And, you know, there are some amazing women who've done brilliant things in this space.

14:03But none of it's growing as fast as we want it to grow. And I think that growth is still going to take some time. And that's really hard because we all want it now. We know how brilliant it is. I want that growth tomorrow yeah um you know and so I think I probably made a slightly conscious decision to move away from working solely in women's sport as well yeah but I remain you know a massive passionate advocate for yeah for women's sport I listened to your interview with Chad

14:29Belinda Moore:Biagini on um his podcast which I think was recorded in or certainly was released in 2024 and I think you were almost a year into your stint at the PWR. And something that really struck me within what's a really enjoyable conversation, a recommended podcast, was how passionately you spoke about your frustration around, even at that point, you know, 10 to 12 months into the PWR, people wasting your time and like flirting around the idea of investing into women's sport but ultimately never having intended to do it um and that comes through really loud and clear and i wonder clearly that's not something that you miss um about doing that role but i i wonder now that you're working on a sort of you know male female uh proposition that has the women's aspect as a a core part of, you know, what the USP is.

15:33Belinda Moore:You finding those conversations are different, you know, when it's a joint? Yeah, I think different is the right way to describe it. I think also it is a property, you know, PWR was in its sort of, not infancy because Premier 15s had existed before, but as PWR it was very much in its early days, whereas the 100, as I say, this is season six, you know, it's a well-established or pretty well-established sporting property now. So you're not having to do that for most brands. You don't have to do that first to explain what it is. Whereas actually you walked in talking about women's rugby pre-Rugby World Cup.

16:06There was still quite a lot of explanation to do. People have now seen it. You know, they know who Ellie Kildan is. They know who's another keeper, Meg Jones, others. It's a different conversation now. Back then it was still very much trying to explain why this was important and why it was valuable. Whereas I think the 100 does it that automatically. You know, that door is slightly open, which is a real positive.

16:26Belinda Moore:you think that's six years into the hundred proposition you think the explanation you know because it's a different format from traditional cricket there are some quirks um you find you're not having to explain the quirks i think less so okay i think less so than women's rugby yeah is i think the point i'm trying to make and obviously you're talking to brands who don't necessarily know the hundred per se yeah but they've probably heard of it if the sort of brands you like to be looking at sponsoring sport yeah have likely heard of it now my next challenge is to go and find those brands who don't normally sponsor sport who can open new doors you can open really exciting doors um and opportunities and that's that's the next bit well let's go there then um what are the types of conversations that you're having around the hundred what what kind of you know in this pursuit of growth in all its forms what are the levers that you have to pull clearly sponsorship you know So what's media at some point in time?

17:29Belinda Moore:What does the pipeline look like for you at the moment? Who are you talking to and how are those conversations going? One of the things is that we work with a lot of agencies. And that's kind of the model that ECB tended to get out, which I'm sure you know anyway. So part of that is also understanding how to work with all those different stakeholders, going back to stakeholder point, to drive that. So as I said, we're looking, you know, what's the proposition we take to market now in this new world? We obviously have devolved a certain amount of commercial inventory to our teams. So there's obviously that changes the landscape.

18:00What do we have to offer? But I think what we need to spend some time doing post this tournament is looking at that inventory landscape more broadly, because actually at the minute it's probably quite traditional in the sense of LEDs or, you know, lots of the things you'd expect to find a sponsorship package. I think it'll be really interesting to see what else we can think about and what other opportunities probably exist now that we have less inventory as a core team. We need to go away and be inventive. We need to go away and think of new opportunities and new ways to get brands involved. And I think that'll be really exciting, actually.

18:33I'm really looking forward to having that headspace. You know, four months in, hasn't been a ton of headspace since I got in the door. So I think I'm quite looking forward to September and October having that time to sit down calmly and look at all the, as you say, all the toys you feel like we've got to play with. And how do we best do that going forward?

18:54Belinda Moore:Yeah. What do partners, I mean, you're in the thick of it. I imagine that you're going to, in some cases, two games a day. No, I haven't done that yet. Vic's done a couple of those. And I think actually, to be fair, we decided that might actually break everybody a bit because they're generally across the country. And trains, as we discussed earlier, being what they are, that makes it more challenging. But you're, I presume, speaking to a lot of people who are invested into the 100 in some way, shape or form. What are you finding that people really like about the 100? What are the USPs that you're going to be sort of emphasising around it?

19:33Yeah, I think it's always been part of the plan. It was to open cricket's doors up to a new audience. And I think that if you look at our audience, you know, we've got 40%, over 40 % juniors coming into the 100. You know, we've still got a really high female demographic coming to the 100. So that's sporty families, if you like, which has always been a really big part of the narrative, continues to be part of it. And whilst lots of sports are going after that market, when they built the proposition for the 100, that was very much the audience. they were looking at and speaking to. So I think that very clear audience that maybe doesn't exist in cricket in other spaces is that huge opportunity to talk, you know, and KP Snacks, for example, and Compare the Market and others who've been just, you know, really loyal sponsors of the 100 have found that audience they want to talk to sits there within cricket.

20:25Belinda Moore:You mentioned the devolution. Obviously, this is a really, this is a fascinating time in the development of the 100 six years in as you mentioned the context to all of this is the um the selling off of stakes in the eight teams you talked about the complicated stakeholder environment in which you now operate in all these different types of investors um into these um various cricket teams obviously a whole tranche of IPL owners but also fascinating investment from America um and all over the place really but alongside that there has come independence of operation for these teams they're all now operating um independently commercially at least and from a marketing perspective they're all going through this process of trying to carve out slightly different distinct brand identities for themselves i suppose and um you know going about that in interesting ways across the board.

21:26Belinda Moore:It's fascinating to watch this develop as a sort of sports marketing story. How does the IPL, for example, come in and try and put the, you know, IPL aspects on kind of English cricket teams? It's fascinating to watch it develop. But from your perspective, helping with the commercial devolution, how satisfied are you with how that's gone? I think this was always going to be a transition year and everyone's talked about it very much like that since I arrived I think it was always going to take time and to your point they're all really different there isn't an identikit team that you can go right you do exactly what they do, do exactly what they do they're operating in different markets the localities of where they're based has an impact on how you talk to that audience so I think it's been really interesting I think they are, of all, a huge amount.

22:20So have we from this year, and we'll continue to learn more in the next couple of weeks. I think it'd be really interesting when we sit everyone down at the end. We've got a couple of commercial reviews coming up in September to find out what do we think worked. You know, it's not a continue, isn't it? It's like, what worked, what didn't, what are we going to do? And I think it'd be interesting to see what we think works as devolved and what we think actually might be better with that benefit of hindsight, perhaps looking at where the things that we can do joined up. Yeah. so I think it'll be fascinating to wash it all up afterwards and to hear how their individual experiences have been and you know given the time frames because obviously it was only complete at the end of last year so a lot of them I think you know I always talk when I was at PWR you know I joined the January and we went live in November and that was a massive race to get everything done I think the same is probably being felt here because it just wasn't a huge nine months a year sounds like a really long runway actually in commercial terms it isn't as we all know those deals take a really long time to get over the line um so i think i think

23:18Belinda Moore:next year will be will be an interesting build on where we are now so wrap up meetings in september what's the um what has the process been like and i appreciate you're only four months into this role and all of these teams are essentially new what um what does the process look like for communicating with them from your perspective and for um you know operating as a different central body now that they're all independent units do you have sort of regular meetings with your equivalents all of the teams or so there's there's various as you imagine working groups there's whatsapp groups no it's actually but that's a whatsapp group well yeah something you should start one potentially i think we've got enough though um but yeah you know there's the There's delivery groups in all the key spaces you'd expect to be, some marketing, ticketing, commercial, and those meet on a regular basis and depending on where we are in the cycle, more regularly or less regularly, depending on where we sit.

24:18So I think there's regular comms in every direction. As you said, there's WhatsApp groups. There's also just general check-ins with people. How are you doing? How's it going? For a lot of them, they'll be new into post, alongside myself, but even the more established members of the team, just checking in that people are finding it, how they're finding it, how can we help, what they need, you know, what assets might we be able to create that would help them as they find their feet a bit. So I think it's, you know, I'd like to say, by and large, I think it's been really collaborative, and that's generally the way I work.

24:52You know, if you look at the other places I've been, that's very much my sort of leadership style. So I think we'll continue to want that. You know, it comes back to the all boats rise, doesn't it? If all eight teams go really well, it's good for the game. So it's not in our interest for teams not to have themselves well-structured, well-organized, doing well on a commercial and marketing front. So, you know, I think it'll be interesting to hear all the feedback. That's a bit good and bad post the tournament.

25:22Belinda Moore:You have worked in, obviously you worked in the sports industry for some time, lots of different roles. You started off, as I said, a little bit into your champion genie interview. so I know your career inside out now but um started off in uh well you you worked for some time at the BBC um and uh well in in the TV world um before coming across to Team GB um or British Olympic Association and then you've been in and around the sports sponsorship market since that point I would suggest um how would you count and then you're you're definitely back in it now in this current current role how would you characterize the the sports sponsorship market at present i think that's an interesting question i think you i'll say you have to work harder but when i first joined picked in things like golf there was still a certain level of chairman's whim knocking around and that is pretty much gone these days apparently we're going back to that oh are we okay i haven't got that at uh in at the sort of Champions League level.

26:32Okay. Okay. I'll bear that in mind next time. Okay. Thank you. Good insight. So no, I think as the market gets tougher, brands get more demanding. You know, they need to see the results. They also, I think, one of the things I think gets lost in a lot of this, they need to be listened to. Lots of time, rights holders or whoever are very good at telling brands what they're doing and telling them all the numbers and all the rest of it. sometimes the best thing to do is just listen what do they want what actually is the outcome they're trying to achieve what do they need to walk back into the boardroom to go back to their boss with what what are the things that matter really matter to them and sometimes that requires time to dig underneath the sort of stock if you like kpis we need to do this much growth we need to show this many bums on seats we need to show this many whatever it might be i think i think that um i think that's changed um i think there's real depth also we you know we can evaluate things much better now so there's also they need to see the results they need to feel that the investment in lots of different ways not as they're not just metrics but actually but that sentiment or brand awareness or whatever it might be is really delivering for them i also think it's quite crowded at the minute you know lots of people have talked about it there's quite a lot of football teams in the market for front of shirt post the gambling piece.

27:52So that's made it quite busy. And I think this is general economic headwinds are probably making the largesse of sponsorship a little harder to do.

28:04Belinda Moore:Yeah. You know, the thing, and definitely in this market and in the UK, football is dominant, obviously. And when the commercial departments of football teams are all sort of pulling in the same direction as they have been over the last few months in the you know ahead of the next football season in the premier league at least not having gambling sponsors on the front of their shirts you know that the tide is going that way and it's very difficult to swim against that tide i would suggest but i wondered if something you said earlier the ecb's model is to use agencies to help with the commercialization of its various properties i presume those agencies aren't just activating they're also sort of seeking out um potential sponsors doing introductions doing the initial sort of bits of work um to bring these brands along a journey i presume these agencies are also the agencies working for premier league football clubs and i wonder whether you know a sport like cricket and a property like the hundred might actually benefit from an intense period of activity where sports sponsors are being sought new types of sports sponsors are being sought and there's kind of a trickle down is that is that something you've seen or quite the opposite i think in terms of 100 i don't know enough yet is the honest answer that i haven't had a chance to you know we as i joined we brought monzo which has been a brilliant sponsor yeah it's a really really good brand for us to have um involved as well you know so there's definitely new sponsors new money coming to the table for the hundred um which is great i don't know about the trickle-down effect i'll be honest um but i think i think it's always about making your proposition as robust as you can um and i think you know one thing we're doing lots of looking at is you know how do you like wimbledon do and like others you know how do you lengthen that window you know we're a four-week property in the summer we have obviously had the auction um this year as well but how do you lengthen that window some quite fun ideas that are flying around to give sponsors and partners that opportunity to feel like they've got that extended period of sort of shop front.

30:13Belinda Moore:What's the current thinking on that? I'm not going to tell you that yet. I'll come back in a year's time to do all that. Okay. And I guess that would be done within the context of cricket. Obviously, you wouldn't compete with other ECB properties, obviously. But cricket is confusing. You might be sort of competing with IPL, window, that kind of thing. It's a really confusing stakeholder environment, cricket. I think most sports are fairly confusing one way or another, unless you know them. And I think there has been actually genuinely a lot of work done because I've seen this since I've joined to sort of give the various individual bits of cricket their window.

30:55So the window for Blast is a window for us. I think, you know, the IPL happens before really we get going. So I think actually the sport's tried, but with the ever-increasing short formats, that starts to become, you know, we need to be very clear. And that's why I actually think the 100 is, again, really clever because actually it stands out in a marketplace of lots of short format cricket. We've created a very unique proposition within that, and actually that gives us some really clear ownership of space, which is brilliant.

31:24Belinda Moore:Yeah. The doubleheader format is amazing, I think. they used to do doubleheaders in football in various tournaments and they never really worked, I don't think. I think, yeah, and I find them quite tough as a parent in rugby because my kids are generally really enthusiastic for the first match, pretty enthusiastic for the first half of the second match. By the second half of the second match, they're done. Yeah, yeah. And actually, I think cricket has lots of good things going for it. I mean, nothing else. It's played in the sun. I mean, the weather's been glorious this summer, which helps. But, you know, you're not freezing cold for a start, which does probably help things a little bit.