Yorkshire will start to clear debts of £25 million on Thursday when the first payments from the sale of Northern Superchargers are made by the Sun Group. Yorkshire were the only host county to sell the whole of their 51% interest in their Hundred team onto external investors due to the club's perilous financial position, and the deal is one of six that has now been completed.
The Sun Group, an Indian media conglomerate who also own Sunrisers Hyderabad (IPL) and Sunrisers Eastern Cape (SA20), bid just over £100 million to buy the Superchargers earlier this year. Their first payments, worth around £50m, will be made on Thursday, with the remainder due later this year once they have assumed operational control of the franchise.
Yorkshire's accounts state that the club received loans worth a combined £5.8m from "a group of committed individuals" - including chairman Colin Graves - in the last financial year, while loans worth a combined £14.9m from the Graves Trusts are due to be repaid by October. Sanjay Patel, the club chief executive, said that clearing those debts is Yorkshire's "first priority".
"The deal puts the club in a strong financial position, which has been far from the case for many years here, and we can start looking towards a very bright future," Patel said on Wednesday. "The first priority is clearing our debts. We will then be looking at how we can invest the surplus funds to not only safeguard the future, but enable us to flourish."
Yorkshire last month incorporated a new subsidiary called Headingley Investment Limited, which is intended to generate profits that will then be reinvested. Patel added: "Yorkshire Cricket now has an opportunity to thrive, from the recreational game all the way through to our professional teams, and we will be focused on planning the next chapter in the club's long history over the coming months."
The Sun Group have already told the ECB that they intend to change the name of the franchise next year and ESPNcricinfo has learned that 'Sunrisers Leeds' and 'Northern Super Sunrisers' are being considered. Two other teams are also likely to be renamed, with Manchester Originals becoming 'Manchester Super Giants' and Oval Invincibles becoming either 'MI Oval' or 'MI London'.
Yorkshire will receive 80% of the money raised from their decision to sell their 51% stake in the franchise, with the rest shared between the other first-class counties (10%) and the recreational game (10%). They will also receive their share of the funds raised from the sale of the ECB's minority stakes in the other seven franchises.
Lancashire (21%) and Glamorgan (1%) also opted to sell part of their shares in their franchises - Manchester Originals and Welsh Fire respectively - and each county will receive around £400,000 on Thursday of "unfettered" funds linked to those sales. The ECB will control the way in which funds from the sale of their stakes are spent with "guardrails" designed to ensure "sustainability".
The ECB held a board meeting on Wednesday to clear the first payments to counties, and chief executive Richard Gould said that Yorkshire would receive a "very significant" sum this week. "Often when something is sold, the money gets taken and it's put into a yacht that's parked off the Bahamas," Gould said. "Here, all of this - every single penny - is going back into the game."
Gould also attempted to dissuade non-host counties from expanding their stadiums specifically in the hope of hosting a franchise if the Hundred expands, saying that minimum capacity requirements would be around 7-8,000. "We're not looking to see investment going into creating white elephants," he said. "What we don't want is a load of empty plastic seats."
Vikram Banerjee, the Hundred's managing director, also revealed that there are still minor details to resolve in Surrey's deal with Reliance Industries Limited for Oval Invincibles, though all parties are confident that it will be signed by early October. Nottinghamshire's deal with Cain International and Ares Management is the other that is yet to be completed, but Banerjee said the deal is "fully there".
"We offered all the investors the opportunity to sign and close immediately, whenever the legals were all done… or close formally at the end of the season," Banerjee said. "Those two chose that months ago.
"Trent Rockets, they're all there bar the singing (sic). The documents are all signed and all the rest of it is fully there. With the Oval Invincibles, there are, I think, three things left on their venue-hire stuff that they're working through. They're small things. It'll be a matter of weeks, and that'll get signed out."
Banerjee will lead a meeting on Thursday afternoon to discuss the Hundred's regulations around player recruitment for 2026, with some teams pushing for a shift to an auction rather than the existing draft. Rashid Khan and Steven Smith have already signed for teams where they have affiliations with incoming investors for the 2025 season, which starts on August 5.