Manchester Super Giants, formerly known as the Originals, won the men's Hundred title at Lord's on Sunday, sealing the first trophy for either the men's or women's franchise since Indian billionaire Sanjiv Goenka's RPSG Group took a controlling 70% stake in the club. The victory, led by Jos Buttler after captain Aiden Markram returned home to South Africa mid-tournament, came in the first season since a wave of private investment reshaped ownership across the competition. Trent Rockets had already secured the women's title, giving the tournament two very different stories about how new owners are changing the face of English cricket's shortest format.
The scale of change has been visible and, at times, awkward. A video shared briefly on social media showed the newly rebranded Sunrisers Leeds squad singing an adapted version of Leeds United's anthem, 'Marching on Together', with lyric sheets in hand and players visibly struggling to keep straight faces. The clip, posted after a win, was soon deleted, but it captured a central tension facing the competition: manufacturing identity and tradition for teams that, in several cases, did not exist under their current names twelve months ago.
How did Manchester Super Giants benefit from a bold rebrand?
Lancashire chief executive Daniel Gidney, who also sits on the Super Giants board, argues that a cautious approach was never realistic in a city already saturated with football clubs.
"If you're trying to launch a new brand in a new market, in the UK particularly, in a city that is dominated by football, you've got to go big and loud," Gidney said.
That philosophy extended to giving away close to 30,000 free replica shirts to fans attending matches, a move Gidney describes as highly unusual in professional sport.
"To give everybody a free jersey who bought a ticket is extraordinarily different," said Gidney.
"You can't normally do it because a kit manufacturer will go, 'No, no, no. I've got to sell that kit for £60-80.' You never get anything for free. It's had a massive impact, much more than I thought."
The club chose to forgo a potentially lower-value kit sponsorship deal this year in order to flood the ground with fans wearing the team's colours, with the intention of negotiating a more lucrative supplier arrangement once the brand is established. Lancashire, which retains 30% ownership of the franchise, says it has kept roughly half of the merchandising arrangements with Super Giants, treating the new brand as something of a test case that could eventually inform how the county markets its T20 Blast side.
On the field, the appointment of former Australia international Tom Moody as director of cricket proved shrewd. Moody previously oversaw Oval Invincibles' run of three consecutive men's Hundred titles, and he was joined this season by fellow Australian Justin Langer as coach, mirroring Langer's role at Goenka's Indian Premier League franchise, Lucknow Super Giants. Despite reaching the IPL final under Goenka's ownership since Lucknow's founding in 2022, that success has yet to materialise there, making the Hundred title Goenka's first trophy across either competition. The Super Giants collect £275,000 in prize money for the win. The club's women's side, coached by former Australia captain Meg Lanning, narrowly missed the knockout stage but appears well placed for future seasons if Lanning remains in charge.
Not every franchise has undergone a wholesale transformation. London Spirit, based at Lord's, retained their existing blue and black colours while incorporating red and yellow stripes associated with Marylebone Cricket Club. Priced at £55, replica Spirit shirts have already sold out of stock originally intended to last through the 2027 season. Spirit is now the most valuable franchise in the competition following a £145m investment from a consortium of technology billionaires, and MCC members attending Hundred matches have doubled compared with the previous year.
By contrast, Oval Invincibles, whose mint green identity and five titles across men's and women's competitions had built genuine fan loyalty, have been rebranded as MI London, adopting the blue kit shared by other franchises under the same ownership group, including Mumbai Indians. Whether that loyalty transfers to the new identity remains an open question. Overall, tournament director Vikram Banerjee acknowledges that crowd numbers and ticket sales are marginally down on last year, though he frames this against the scale of the changes involved.
"It's impossible to overstate the scale of operational change the competition has gone through this season, but we're really happy with where we are and what has been delivered this year," Banerjee said.
Has private investment reshaped ownership across the whole competition?
The changes at Manchester and Leeds are part of a much wider shift. According to a broadcasting industry report, the 2026 season opened with all eight Hundred franchises under private ownership, with three teams already carrying new names by the start of the campaign and five further sides rolling out updated branding under their new backers, as separately detailed in a national broadcaster's coverage of the rebrands. That same coverage reported that the new identities of Manchester Super Giants, MI London and Sunrisers Leeds were designed to align visually with the IPL franchises owned by the same investment groups, which explains the distinctly IPL-style atmosphere now heard at grounds such as Old Trafford, where crowds chant "MSG! MSG! MSG!" during matches.
The overseas investment extends well beyond Goenka's involvement. Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly's investment group acquired a 49% stake in Trent Rockets, according to a separate report from the same broadcaster, adding another high-profile overseas name to the tournament's ownership structure. Sky Sports reported that all eight sides now have overseas investors, including a stake held by Reliance Industries in MI London and a stake held by Cain International in Trent Rockets. A report from a national newspaper's analysis of the ownership changes put the total scale of the investment wave at more than £500m entering the domestic game, funding changes to player pay, coaching staff, team logos and wider commercial structures.
This represents a significant departure from how the competition began. A national broadcaster's report on the sale process noted that the 2025 sales marked the first time all eight Hundred franchises had been sold to private investors, ending the England and Wales Cricket Board's central ownership of the teams and shifting decision-making, branding and strategy into the hands of individual owners for the first time since the tournament launched.
Is The Hundred widening cricket's audience despite the divisions it causes?
Regardless of how any individual franchise has rebranded, the tournament remains a source of genuine disagreement within the sport. One prominent investor told reporters that while the working relationship between their franchise and its host county had been excellent, they had been surprised by the strength of negative reaction from traditional County Championship supporters.
Supporters of the competition point to who is attending matches, not just how many. Glamorgan chair Mark Rhydderch-Roberts highlights the demographic shift at Sophia Gardens.
"The most important thing is that it's brought a completely different and younger demographic into the sport," says Rhydderch-Roberts.
"46% of ticket buyers are new to Sophia Gardens, 30% are female buyers, and 46% are family tickets."
Lancashire's Gidney sees converting those new attendees into long-term followers of other formats as central to his job.
"It's down to my job to try and convert those to come and watch the Blast and ultimately the County Championship," says Gidney. "It's lifting everybody up."
Fans of counties without a Hundred franchise may dispute how evenly that benefit is shared, but Rhydderch-Roberts is unequivocal about the impact in Wales.
"The Hundred has given us the chance to really transcend what's a difficult and fairly challenging macroeconomic environment and take us in a different direction," he says.
Why does the Indian market remain central to future plans?
Television audiences, and the broadcast revenue that follows them, may ultimately prove the most important metric for owners. In India, the tournament had previously been available only on the streaming platform FanCode, but this year it is being broadcast on JioStar, the same platform that carries the IPL. Early broadcast audience growth in India has been modest but encouraging, and negotiations over a new broadcast deal are expected to begin next year, giving owners a clear incentive to grow that audience further.
Four of the eight Hundred franchises are now owned by groups that also hold IPL franchises, prompting some concern that the competition's identity risks being overshadowed by its Indian counterpart. England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive Richard Gould, however, plays down the significance of the Indian market relative to the tournament's core audience.
"The Indian market is marginal to us when you look at the relative broadcast values from overseas," he says.
"This is a UK competition, largely for a UK fanbase and a UK market, and that will always be our strength and our focus."
Gould acknowledges the ambition to eventually resemble football's Premier League, where roughly half of all revenue is generated overseas, but urges patience given cricket's current global standing.
"We're at the start of that journey. We need to make sure that we focus on what's right for our market."
Could The Hundred ever become a T20 competition?
A long-running question over whether the 100-ball format might eventually give way to a conventional T20 competition remains unresolved, though tournament director Banerjee insists the current identity is central to the competition's appeal.
"What's really important for any sporting tournament is the strength of foundations within its home country," he says.
"Whether you're the NFL, the Premier League, the IPL, the strength in their home territory is important."
Gidney goes further, suggesting owners themselves have little appetite for such a change.
"Everybody sees the uniqueness of The Hundred, and that's one of the big appeals to broadcasters," he adds.
"If we become a T20, I don't think we can say that. The Hundred gives the UK a real opportunity to say, 'Do you know what? In certain elements we can be as good as, if not better than, the IPL.'"
The competition remains a divisive presence in English cricket and is unlikely to win over every sceptic. What is harder to dispute is that it has generated substantial revenue and opened access to audiences, both domestic and international, that may not have been reachable without this restructuring.
What happens next for The Hundred?
According to the same broadcasting industry report, the 2026 season is continuing beyond its July launch, with the remaining fixtures and the knockout stage representing the next major milestone for the newly privatised competition. A separate report from a national broadcaster noted that new kits and branding introduced for 2026 are still being rolled out across venues as the season progresses, suggesting further visible changes to team identities may follow before the competition's broadcast rights are renegotiated next year.
Key Facts
- Manchester Super Giants, formerly the Originals, won the men's Hundred title at Lord's on Sunday under owner Sanjiv Goenka, collecting £275,000 in prize money.
- Trent Rockets won the women's title, having kept their original name and colours; Todd Boehly's investment group holds a 49% stake in the franchise.
- All eight Hundred franchises are now under private ownership for 2026, following sales in 2025 that ended ECB central control of the teams.
- Overseas investors now hold stakes across the competition, including Reliance Industries in MI London and Cain International in Trent Rockets.
- More than £500m in private investment has entered the competition, funding rebrands, new coaching appointments and higher player pay.
