The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has been forced to allow gambling firms to sponsor the teams playing in the flagship The Hundred event due to a lack of interest from elsewhere.
The Hundred is a family-friendly competition and the ECB have been keen to resist betting operators from getting involved as sponsors and commercial partners.
They have been officially banned from involvement as of the 2027 edition, however this summer’s edition WILL allow gambling firms to sponsor the franchises after the governing body admitted defeat in finding alternative companies willing to pay for a sponsorship package.
Not Stumping Up
Eight franchises will compete in the 2026 edition of The Hundred, but only five of them have secured non-gambling sponsors ahead of the tournament, which gets underway on July 21.
As it stands, the remaining three teams face the prospect of playing in sponsor-less shirts… hence the ECB’s rather embarrassing U-turn on betting partners for the summer showpiece.
English cricket’s regulatory body has already been forced to go cap in hand to external investors, with TeamCos – a syndicate made up of Indian Premier League team owners, American private equity and tech bros – now owning either a minority or majority share in all eight of the franchises to plug the funding gap.
The managing director of The Hundred, Vikram Banerjee, hailed the new investment:
“It’s an exciting moment to now have all eight deals complete. The world-leading partners we now have on board will help us take The Hundred to the next level and establish it as the unmissable summer event.”
They have been able to attract some big name sponsors as well, with the likes of Barclays and Monzo sponsoring the teams and Nike, Castore and New Balance acting as kit suppliers. Toyota, Sage and Vitality have been unveiled as official tournament partners.
KP Snacks, which formerly had a monopoly on front-of-shirt sponsorship in The Hundred, has now been downgraded to official shirt sleeve partner.
But there is still a critical budget shortage for some of the franchises; hence why the ECB has been forced into a comedown on their anti-gambling stance as the competition continues to struggle in its bid to attract commercial investment.
Explaining their decision, the ECB commented that the lack of interested parties was due to this being a ‘transitional season’ for the tournament, with team name changes – in light of the new owners – forcing The Hundred into something of a reset as the governing body looks to breathe life into its beleaguered competition.
“Ultimately, this is a decision for teams to make, and given the transitional nature of 2026, some teams remained keen to have the option to pursue visible betting partners for this year’s competition only,” an ECB spokesperson commented.
“Consensus was therefore reached amongst the teams to permit on-kit betting partnerships in 2026, subject to several strict parameter. These parameters only allow teams to pursue a one-year deal for 2026, with teams unanimously agreeing to ban on-kit betting advertising from 2027.”
Minimum Commercial Value Threshold
As part of the agreement, The Hundred’s franchises will be required to sell replica shirts that don’t have any gambling sponsorship on them – only the kits worn by the players will feature any such branding.
And the players, be it for personal or religious reasons, will be allowed to take to the field in a plain shirt with no sponsor logo.
Other forms of gambling advertising, such as on pitch-side advertising hoardings and electronic screens, will be ‘restricted’.
One of the stumbling blocks will be that any such deal has to meet a ‘minimum commercial value threshold’, which – in layman’s terms – means that any prospective sponsors must be willing to pay the going rate; which explains why three of the Hundred’s teams have found it so difficult to find a sponsor.
Most betting operators aren’t short of a few quid and would be willing to meet that minimum threshold, but the late-in-the-day nature of the deal – the tournament kicks off in less than a fortnight – and a general lack of interest in The Hundred, with some games barely scraping 200,000 viewers on the BBC and Sky Sports, makes negotiations more complicated.
At the time of writing, no sponsorship deals between betting firms and The Hundred franchises had been announced.
The Hundred, which is now the flagship domestic short format competition in the UK, has followed in the footsteps of football’s English Premier League, who have agreed a voluntary ban on front-of-shirt gambling sponsorships that will begin in August.