UP532 Inside Edge: County Cricket Beyond The Hundred

0:00Pete Fitzboydon:If you don't host test cricket or the 100, you've probably got about 50 to 60 days cricket a year, roughly. And do each of those days make money? Good question. Now, well, there is the fundamental issue. Out of those 50, 60 days, about seven make money. Hi there, Richard Gillis here. Welcome to Unofficial Partner. That was Pete Fitzboydon, who until 2025 was Chief Executive Officer of Sussex County Cricket Club. And it's a very useful time to be talking to Pete because this month it was announced that Sussex County Cricket Club had been put into special measures by the ECB following sustained operating losses over the last financial year.

0:43And we'll start this campaign with point deductions. So Pete was CEO. He left in 2025. He talks about the challenges faced by counties, particularly that sit outside the Test Match host grounds and those with 100 franchise. so this is an episode of Inside Edge which is our cricket focused podcast series produced with Mike Jakeman our co-host and you'll find in our archive a whole load of conversations about cricket and it's where we take the general themes and trends of the sports business and point them at the game and so I want to thank Pete for coming on I think you'll find it a very relevant very timely conversation

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2:21You looking forward to this? Yeah, no, I am as well. We've been talking about doing something focused on county cricket for a while. So it's great that we've got Pete with us. Pete, welcome to our little collective.

2:33Pete Fitzboydon:Great to be here. Thanks for inviting me. Not at all. I sort of first met you. Obviously, I'm a Brighton resident and I pop over to Hove County Cricket Club or the county ground. I'm not allowed to call that. Call it now that I can't remember what the official name is now. The first central county ground. I think actually it might not be anymore. I think it might have expired that, but let's go with that. So I'll keep calling it Hove and irritate the club's commercial people. So I pop in. I'm, you know, I love it. They're an old fashioned cricket fan. So I'm always going to. But I just thought it'd be interesting to get your view of just the state of the game and the state of play.

3:13First of all, I guess there's a question about what the job is. So you were CEO at Sussex. Can you just give us an idea of what that means? What do you do all day?

3:24Pete Fitzboydon:It is everything and anything, I think it's fair to say. It's very different in the closed season to the season. It does split pretty much six months straight down the middle. During the season, it is all hands to the pump, trying to get people to go to cricket, to spend money at cricket without being too blunt about it, getting cricket played. Because, you know, yes, of course, there's a head coach, director of cricket, but ultimately, you know, there are things, things happen, injuries happen. And just so just running the show in the closed season, it is everything else. I mean, when I started the job, people said, you must have your feet up in the winter.

4:04Pete Fitzboydon:It must be fantastic. But quite the opposite. Almost everything you do in a normal job happens in the closed season. Because when cricket's played, that just dominates. So it is literally anything and everything. And how many games a year are there just generally? And you mentioned there about audience trying to get people in the ground and all those questions. But give us a sense of where does the money come in and where does it go out? Yeah. God, how long have you got? Well, probably about an hour. It is quite a complex sport. It's funny, when you go from the outside, it's quite simple, isn't it?

4:37Pete Fitzboydon:It's a bit of county championship, a bit of limited obis, and that's about it. It works out. No two clubs are the same. Just get that out there from the start. There are different ownership models, different teams hosting, all lots of different things. But if you don't host test cricket or the 100, you've probably got about 50 to 60 days cricket a year, roughly. And that's the men's, possibly the women's if they play there, a few other host games. So it's probably around that. It's 50 to 60 days, roughly. And do each of those days make money? Good question. Now, well, there is the fundamental issue.

5:15Pete Fitzboydon:Out of those 50, 60 days, again, every club's different, about seven made money. And I know that sounds ridiculous. And that is where, by and large, the T20, the Blast, the Blast makes money for non-hosts. That's when you're likely to get quite a few thousand in, probably spending money. But when I say it makes money, that ignores the cost of the players and all that kind of stuff. It's just in a very simplistic, it takes more money in than you spend on hosting it. Of course, there's the odd day that may be a wonderful sunny bank holiday in Hove, and you might scrape to not a red number. But ultimately, it is literally that.

5:57The rest of it, you're losing money. Do you know off the top of your head approximately what sort of size of crowd you'd need for a county championship game to break even?

6:08Pete Fitzboydon:Again, every single one's different. Every single ground's different, different costs, different income drivers. You'd probably need about 1 ,500 to 2 ,000 through the gate to make money. But this is the quirk of county cricket. I mean, when I was at Sussex, we increased county championship crowd by almost 50%, so it was fantastic. But actually, that doesn't equal money, because most of the people that come to county championship are members, so you know duefully pay their 250 quid every year and if they come to cricket fantastic if they don't they don't so a lot of the crowd that we got to got it we'd already have the money's already in the till without being too crude um and you know a lot of people say oh well still you know they spend money when they're there and that's true and you might get 10 pounds per person you know average spend which should be which is great but by the time you've paid wages cost of food always kind of things you're probably about 20 percent of that stick so you know you work hard to get more people to go to cricket but that in itself doesn't necessarily solve it so it's a it's a tougher gig than first meets the eye but nonetheless you mentioned a 50 percent rise in the lot of people going to counter championship games how did you do that well i'd love to take personal credit i think a lot of it was promotion uh as in getting promoted not uh wonderful uh promotion of the game.

7:36Pete Fitzboydon:Actually, to be fair, there was a lot of that. There was a lot of work in a lot better communication with members, with other people, to remind people you're there. I mean, a lot of people almost forgot cricket was on their doorstep. So yes, you can advertise a lot, but because there's not much upside, as I've just explained, you can't spend too much advertising it, but you can communicate with certainly your members an awful lot better. There was a bit of a vibe around Sussex because just got promoted team playing very well actually ended up coming forth which was fantastic so there was a bit of a that sort of feel-good factor and and home you know as you rightly say this is a wonderful place to come and visit in the sunshine i'll take credit for the weather clearly that was that was definitely me so i'm just trying to think what you would do with this information so you've got this scenario and how does it impact so the money from the central fund is what how much is that yeah so again every single club is slightly different to give you a bit of a picture of the 18 professional counties eight of those host test cricket a slightly different eight host the 100 so let's put them on one side for a minute just because they're a very very different animal those that don't host those big matches probably turn over between five and ten million ballpark around that about three million of that ish maybe a little bit more is from the ecb so uh and that comes into various different formats so for some counties it's over half their income for some a little bit less but it nonetheless is instrumental it's the only thing that makes the whole thing work and and the ecb you know do a great job of media sales for the test matches all that kind of stuff that allow them to distribute that if they don't just distributed for pure benevolence it is of course where all the players get developed you know future county future test players rather future hundred players are developed through county so there is a logic behind the distribution but it does give you a bit of an idea of quite how dependent everyone is on those not handouts from the ecb but certainly funding from the ecb in is absolutely critical about i'm trying to guess but i reckon about 80 percent of that ecb income is the sort of Sky deal, the global rights, the media rights deals, presumably.

10:00Pete Fitzboydon:It is, yeah, by and large, it is exactly that. Obviously, there's something coming from Test Match Ticket Team and that's split with Ho. So I think you wouldn't be a million miles off the mark with that. 1.3 million of that comes from the 100, which I'm sure will be a discussion point throughout this, of this new competition. So, you know, every single club gets that every year. And that is the difference between survival and the opposite. I feel like whenever this sort of stuff gets reported, there's always an assumption behind it that if you have a county that's reliant on the ECB for a higher proportion of their revenue, that that's somehow sort of a bad thing because they're not necessarily like a self-sustaining business on their own.

10:44But just as a sort of thought experiment, is that actually a bad thing? Because if we think about this, this is all part of a single ecosystem. and yes it sounds bad that you a club might be getting a lot of money from the ecb but then if the club develops these really world-class players they disappear off and they go to play for england and the club don't seem again you know the ecb isn't going to break off into or the england team isn't going to break off into a sort of separate entity much as perhaps the current management might like it to you know this is all part of the same thing and will always be part of the same thing so the money is just being put through the system in a you know self-sustaining way perhaps

11:22Pete Fitzboydon:you're absolutely right i mean if you look at if you treated cricket as one business almost cricket plc you're right you know the we're almost the r &d to a degree uh developing the product that's a really good way of thinking of it then go on what have global global fame it needs to be a fantastic job of media sales and everything else i think that the one so you're I don't think it is a bad thing. I think it's an inevitability of sport that you have your very valuable assets, in this case being test cricket, and those that develop it. You look at the Premier League, it's a bit on its head, really.

11:57Pete Fitzboydon:I suppose the club game is the bigger one in terms of media rights. But still, they all feed off each other. They all need each other. And that's how it works. Well, I think I would say it's high risk because if you look at where the money is coming from, the negotiation of those media fees uh those media deals is crucial crucial the whole game and if there's a bad negotiation or bad luck bad timing if you've got to keep make sure your players carry on playing in your products and don't wander off to the IPL Caribbean and you know other even like competing products so that there's that as well that you've got to make sure you look after your own.

12:39Pete Fitzboydon:So it is definitely high risk, but ultimately I don't think wrong. I just think it's part of the system. Unless the franchises move to take that job. We had Kumar Sankakara on a while ago and he sort of was suggesting, and this was probably two years ago, so this might have moved on. And he sort of, after the pod, he was suggesting that the franchises wanted to grow their ability to almost own the pyramid, you know, in terms of the talent pipelines. And he then afterwards got in touch and was quite sensitive about that because I think he was told off for talking about it in public. But there is a suggestion that if that shift happens, to Mike's point, and the ecosystem then does come under pressure, Because if the 15 or 20 test players, male test players, are in a sort of cocoon of their own, and then you can then handpick from a franchise world, you've got the 2020 to test cricket problem.

13:49Can they bridge that gap? But that's an alarm bell, isn't it? So if you start to say, right, okay, I'm in favor, you'll be shocked to hear of this ecosystem argument, and I'm now trying to think of ways in which it becomes vulnerable. And one of them is it's not just the 2020 tournaments, it's the ambitions of those franchises, which are becoming very significant in the landscape.

14:17Pete Fitzboydon:You're absolutely right, especially with franchise cricket getting big. The numbers coming out of the IPL are scarcely believable. I can't quite comprehend them, to be honest, in terms of the value and the revenue that's going into them. If that was replicated here, which is very much the plan, the plan is to be the second biggest behind the IPL very, very quickly, there's a lot of money to spend, and therefore a lot of money associated with developing players. There's a financial reward there. What I would say is the scale of it is so, so big to replicate. for a Southern Brave to reach into Stookley Cricket Club and pluck out the next star, it is tough and develop them year on year on year on year.

15:02Pete Fitzboydon:I think there's a risk they do the end bit, which is almost that fine-tuning, the academy, the finishing school of cricket. There's certainly a danger of that because players have no, I say no allegiance, that sounds harsh, that they will rightly follow the best path for themselves. Well, they're sort of being educated. The market is educating the players to have no allegiance, isn't it? It is. And I don't blame them. When you talk to some players and in the winter, they're off to South Africa now, potentially to UAE, Pakistan, playing various leagues around the world. I absolutely don't blame them.

15:43Pete Fitzboydon:They are, if they do well in a 10-year career, hopefully longer, and a lot of them aren't much above the median salary. You know, for a county contract, for a stock county player, you might be talking 40 grand during their early career, raising to 60 grand. You know, we're not talking retirement territory. We're talking Premier League wages, but for a year, not a week. And so, you know, do I blame them for going off to sunny declines and making some money? absolutely not i think they're absolutely right to good i i can see this conversation going towards the hundred before it does there's a question about just the local question about what the incentives are to be a better team you mentioned there that you know where to put the money are stars valuable in this in in that county game you mentioned there about promotion being an impact on the sort of overall value and revenue went up because of it which i think is quite sort of interesting because some promotion relegation sort of from my point of view i don't really care whether sussex are in the top or the bottom league i'll just go and you know watch what's on so i'm interested it's fine it's interesting that idea so it's sort of for me slightly counterintuitive but i just wonder what the incentives are for a ceo of a county game to say right okay we're going to go the galacticos route we're going to go and pick up a load spend a lot of money on on the start playing stuff versus the other route which is no the opposite of that no it is interesting actually going back to your point well why did people come i think a little bit of it was seeing better teams better players a little bit of a little bit of well i think we were just in the news and people remembered you know what oh we might go and watch some crickets i don't think it was just our division one now let's go no no one no one answer for everybody oh in terms of incentive to win because you're absolutely right in the premier league in football there might be a big incentive well certainly championship getting promoted is worth risking if you win the counter championship i can't remember the exact prize money it's about four to five hundred thousand pounds for winning most of that goes in player bonuses so for winning so there isn't any and i would probably say that that's not necessarily a bad thing because if you want the sustainable system, you don't want teams risking, risking money, risking their hard-earned cash on player wages.

18:11Pete Fitzboydon:So I think it's probably quite a healthy thing. If all of a sudden there was a million or two million pound carrot at the end of the road for this, you might think, do you know what? We will sign an extra player and then five or six counties will sign their extra player and you've just blown half a million quid. So I think actually not having big prize money is quite a healthy thing in county cricket. for his long-term future. Actually, on this issue, I find this fascinating. If we take the last 10 or 15 years or so, which coincides obviously with the growth of franchise cricket around the world, has it become more difficult for English counties to persuade recognisable names to come and play for either a shorter term or for a season?

18:54How's that balance? I think going back to...

18:58Pete Fitzboydon:Absolutely. I mean, going back to my first ever, first-class game was, I'll show my age, I think it was 1985, 1986, Bath Recreation Ground, out-ground cricket, watching Somerset play Kent, Somerset had Viv Richards, Ian Botham, Joel Garner. So it turned out it was all right, actually. It wasn't always like that. But you used to have players for the whole year. And a test player would come over, play for you the whole season. those days have gone now and because it is a it's an incredibly crowded global calendar you know all those different competitions i've just spoken about some of them over encroaching on the english summer as well so there are other play other things for people to play that are probably playing more there's test cricket of course which goes on all around the world so that's very very tricky as well so if you're lucky enough to get a notable player you've probably got them for four or five games.

19:58Pete Fitzboydon:You've stolen a slot of their calendar, and then you'll slot another one in somewhere else and somewhere else and somewhere else. And their price tag's gone up, to be blunt. And coming back to that commercial imperative of winning, because there isn't so much, of course everyone wants to win. That's the business of cricket. Of course it is. But it's not a be-all and end-all. Risking 10 grand a game on a player, you don't see it back. So, you know, they're just not there anymore, even if they are available. That said, I think the 100, we've seen a lot of players come in and play county cricket before the 100, which has been really a proper global start.

20:36Pete Fitzboydon:So that in itself, I think, does help lure people to the English summer. That's interesting that the commercial imperative sort of isn't there. And also, if you hire somebody, an Australian or a West Indian, who's going to play four games at a higher cost, You're also blocking the pathway for whoever was in your team prior to that player arriving. You're right. And some of the ECB funding is actually predicated on playing your own players, rightly, to bring English players through, develop them, block them as early as possible in top-level cricket. So you're right, there's lots of reasons not to.

21:11Pete Fitzboydon:Although it does get bums on seats, the right name does. I think before my time, Sussex signed Steve Smith in an Ashes Summer. And yeah, not a bad name. Unfortunately, I think by all accounts, most of the games were away from Hover, actually, so you've actually benefited other counties. Very magnanimous of you. There aren't very many test regulars playing any more than cameo appearances in the county championship. Kamal Roach at Surrey is the only one that comes to my mind immediately as being a first pick in a test side who's there for the season. Anymore? Kate Williamson was at Middlesex last year, fleetingly.

21:55Pete Fitzboydon:You know, so you're right. You're probably counting on one hand for proper test match. People on the street would know. It's also the allegation you mentioned there about Somerset and Richardson-Garner and Sussex, obviously, you know, Imran Khan and Garth LaRue. And that period of, I suppose, 70s and 80s we're talking about here, where every county had two or three top test stars and they were sort of part of the fabric and you knew you could have a relationship, even if you weren't a fan, with those counties because you sort of knew Zaheer would be at Gloucester. There's a value there, I guess, in just the longevity of the relationships.

22:34Cali Turana, you know, all of these players that were synonymous with their county and that we're just in a different world now. There was a period, wasn't there, that county cricket itself was almost like a sort of IPL-ish product because of the window. It had all of the best players in the world. And we used to remember the arguments about why are we training these foreign players in county cricket? Why are we giving Viv Richards the sort of career in county cricket where he comes and beats us in test matches? That, I think, sums up where we are now, the difference. and you see it in lots of different sports as well i had a conversation this morning about football and the the sort of that star and team dynamic which is you know if you if you listen to podcasts like this one ad nauseam people will come on and say that gen z and gen alpha want to follow the star they don't care about teams we don't know that yet we don't know what the long-term impact it is yet but it's a youtube digital impressions version of what fandom is but i guess there is also the question of getting people through the door and you'd also look at the fact of central

23:52Pete Fitzboydon:contracts have central contracts for england being a good thing bad thing i think it just had to happen you know to manage player workload you've got to do that and you can't put on the play you need to have a central body controlling their workload making sure they stay fit well for all the above reasons i spoke about he's not the good old days i remember paul farber saying when he was playing professionally he played for the summer and then we get a part-time job in the winter whether it's teaching or whatever you know they're not those days anymore although they used to play an awful lot of cricket well accounts during the summer but but still those central contracts that do look after players but there's an inevitability that that means they can't play county cricket all the time as much as they want to.

24:36Pete Fitzboydon:You know, I know, I'm sure Joffre Archer would love to play for Sussex every week, but it just would not be good for him. It wouldn't be good for England. Just for a hand back to Mike, there's a question that I asked Stuart Kane at Warwickshire about. Could you, is there any way of filling the ground for a county game? Yeah. Well, Surrey did it very well last year. I think they had twice, they had about 15 ,000 people, I think from memory. you know that they've got an oval which helps it's not a not a bad catchment error of about nine million people but but still you know they got 15 000 people there i think they broke the post-war record of being 80 000 for 100 game no that was for a county cricket the county they did it twice i think it was yorkshire and one other county so it shows it's possible yeah and you know they got 80 000 people there over a season just for county championship and all of the stats are that people do enjoy it when they come.

25:33Pete Fitzboydon:It's just actually getting them over that threshold. It can be better marketed. Of course it can be. But if you look at it, and certainly when I talk to my kids, and they love the 100, by the way, they do, but I think a lot of that is because it's in the headlines. They actually see it, whereas county cricket, certainly as an avid fan, you have to scroll halfway down the BBC website, you know dive in a few it's not front and center it's not the culmination of a season it's not the big um yeah playoff between yeah more it should well a couple of years ago that's what it did do when uh i think somerset had that amazing game against sorry but that was the only time it was popped above the surface into the mainstream because it was a phenomenal game you just don't see it unless you're looking for it whereas before you did it was back page well front page for some of your both and stuff, wasn't it?

26:26Pete Fitzboydon:But it was, you know, it was just, you couldn't ignore it. And so it was more of a, just a thing to do. We need to talk about the 100 now, because this obviously is going to be a, the start of a transformative period, one way or the other. There are lots of numbers that are talked about, which makes it hard to get on a podcast to kind of get your head around it. Are you able to kind of contextualize some of the numbers? So for Sussex, for example, a non-100 hosting club, what money are they getting? How does that fit into their revenue that they get in a year and stuff? So how transformative is this going to be?

27:01Pete Fitzboydon:The big thing for non-hosts, so the 10 non-hosts of the 100, is£1.3 million a year. The drops in the account every single year that keeps us alive. And that was part of the deal when they set up the 100, that every single county would get that£1.3 million every year. Absolutely fantastic. Hopefully, that will continue in the new media rights deal because counties like Sussex, Somerset, Kent, et cetera, they rely on it. They absolutely need it to make the business models work. So that's the revenue bit. There's also been a massive windfall for every single county when they sold the rights to third parties for the franchises.

27:51Pete Fitzboydon:and as I would know that what certainly did hit the headlines in terms of the overall value of those eight franchises was valued at one billion pounds which I still can't get my head around that it's a product that is played for one month a year with no ground assets actually no player assets even you know even they're kind of if you like rented in the nicest possible way and it's worth a billion pounds, which is why when I look back at county cricket, I think there must be something there because they're playing at the same grounds, broadly the same game, few fewer balls, and it's worth a billion pounds.

28:31Pete Fitzboydon:So there must be some value there. We're just not tapping into it. I think that's the challenge. But the 100, both in terms of selling that, all non-hosts received, I think it was about 24 million pounds. That's not cash off you go. It's very much around a fund that people can tap into to build things, spend it on things that make money. Because I think what the ECB rightly did not want to do was drop in the account, because where would it go? It would be competing for players and just almost that windfall and the family silver's been sold for no real benefit. So hopefully this money will be really well spent across the county game to safeguard it for another, you know, however many decades you should see it through.

29:17Pete Fitzboydon:And the UCB rightly are being very, very protective of that money to make sure it's spent well, because it's, you know, we haven't got another 100 to sell. This is, you know, this is the last of the assets for the counties. So I think that's the big thing for counties, to try and turn that money into something that makes money, that makes the grounds better to attract more players and fans, et cetera, et cetera. but it is a once in a lifetime opportunity does the money have to get spent on cricket related activity not necessarily no absolutely not you know you can if you wanted to build a hotel a gym or whatever something that makes money around the year absolutely and certainly for me that that's what i advocate that if you look at a ground as we said earlier a ground is a big old place some bigger than others some in the countryside some in cities but it's a pretty big place and it's played on 50 to 60 days a year.

30:14Pete Fitzboydon:You know, it's not played on it, 300. So what can you do in those 300 to make money? You know, there'll be various people who've made a really good thing of hotels. Paddle, for me, paddle is the golden goose at the moment. You know, it is incredible. Paddle tennis, you make your money back in a year. So if you've got the space, put paddle, absolutely. Gym, health and fitness. At Sussex, we opened a Sixies theme bar, which was a sort of virtual cricket that gets people in the ground all year round. Because it's not just about making money. It's actually getting people through the ground. If you can get younger people there, hopefully you can gather their data and try and flog them some cricket tickets.