Reliance Industries Limited, chaired by patriarch and Asia’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, have forged an impressive cricketing portfolio that includes the Mumbai Indians of the IPL, recent SA20 winners MI Cape Town, MI Emirates in the ILT20 and MI New York of Major League Cricket.
The eight franchises have been sold in part or in full to private investors after a bidding process run by Deloitte and the Raine Group in conjunction with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), who launched the short-format competition in 2021.
The Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) retain the majority share and will now work with a group that includes significant figures at Microsoft, Apple and Adobe and has been involved in Major League Cricket in the United States.
A Silicon Valley-based tech consortium led by Nikesh Arora, chief executive of cyber-security firm Palo Alto, valued the Lord’s franchise at just short of £300m as they took a 49 per cent stake.
Lancashire opted to sell part of their portion of the Manchester Originals to investors RPSG Group, who now have a controlling stake of 70 per cent in return for £81m.
