Lalit Modi ridicules the Hundred for being ‘overambitious’ in latest financial projections about the competition.
Lalit Modi ,the Indian Premier League’s creator and architect, has accused the ECB of being “disconnected from reality” in their aspirations for the Hundred after disclosing the board’s private financial forecasts for the competition and its evaluations of each of the eight teams.
On Thursday, Modi posted a lengthy post on X (previously Twitter) in which he rejected the ECB’s financial advisors’ calculations as “dangerously overambitious and unsustainable” and included excerpts from the prospectus that Raine Group and Deloitte sent to prospective investors (under NDA).
The ECB’s efforts to attract private investment for their tournament have suffered a humiliating setback with Modi’s intervention. Earlier this week, the director of business operations for the board, Vikram Banerjee, acknowledged that they might have to postpone the Hundred’s equity sale until after 2025 if the proper investors couldn’t be found in time for the competition the following summer.
According to reports from February, Modi himself expressed interest in the Hundred. He told The Telegraph that he had private investors willing to support an expanded ten-team competition and that he had valued the Hundred at US$1 billion over a ten-year period. But it’s thought that the ECB rejected his informal offer since it didn’t want to completely surrender the competition.
But now Modi has openly mocked the tournament’s feasibility. Even though he concedes that it is “plausible” that the ECB’s domestic TV rights will increase in value as anticipated, from £54 million to £85 million yearly, he delivered a dismal evaluation of the Hundred’s standing in the global market, where it will be up against competition from rival Northern Hemisphere leagues like the Major League Cricket in the USA and the Caribbean Premier League.
“The ECB’s financial projections for The Hundred, particularly beyond 2026, appear overly optimistic and disconnected from reality,” he wrote. “The International TV rights figures make little sense, given the global competition from other cricket leagues like the IPL. It’s unlikely The Hundred will attract the necessary international audience to justify these inflated numbers.”