Yorkshire will begin paying off about £25 million in loans on Thursday, once the first tranche of cash from the sale of the Northern Superchargers franchise drops into the county’s account.
The Indian-owned Sun Group – already behind Sunrisers Hyderabad in the IPL and Sunrisers Eastern Cape in SA20 – agreed earlier this year to buy Yorkshire’s entire 51 per cent stake in the Superchargers for a little over £100 million. Roughly half of that sum, around £50 million, is due this week, with the balance scheduled once the new owners formally take charge of day-to-day operations.
Sanjay Patel, Yorkshire’s chief executive, has been blunt about the order of business. “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,” he 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.”
Why the urgency? Yorkshire’s most recent accounts list £5.8 million in short-term loans from “a group of committed individuals” – among them current chair Colin Graves – plus a further £14.9 million owed to the Graves family trusts, repayable by October. Bank interest, already a drain on tight budgets, would only climb if the club let that deadline slide.
By settling the liabilities in one go, Yorkshire reckon they can pivot from firefighting to planning. The county recently set up a subsidiary, Headingley Investment Limited, designed to spin off commercial projects and funnel any profit back into cricket at all levels. Patel framed it in broad terms: “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.”
Name change on the horizon
The Sun Group has told the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) it intends to rebrand the team before the 2026 Hundred season. Two working options – ‘Sunrisers Leeds’ and ‘Northern Super Sunrisers’ – have been circulated, though no final decision has been made. Rebrands elsewhere are on the table too, with Manchester Originals tipped to morph into ‘Manchester Super Giants’ and Oval Invincibles considering ‘MI Oval’ or ‘MI London’.
How the windfall is split
Yorkshire retain 80 per cent of the proceeds from selling their share, a clause inserted by the ECB to reflect the county’s majority stake in the franchise. The remaining 20 per cent is split evenly: half among the other 17 first-class counties and half ring-fenced for the recreational game.
Counties that sold smaller chunks of equity will also receive their slice on Thursday. Lancashire off-loaded 21 per cent of Manchester Originals, Glamorgan shifted 1 per cent of Welsh Fire, and both are due roughly £400,000 in what one administrator called “unfettered” funds. By contrast, cash raised from the ECB’s own minority holdings comes with what the board describes as “guardrails”, designed to make sure money supports long-term sustainability rather than a short burst of spending.
Richard Gould, the ECB’s chief executive, argued at Wednesday’s board meeting that the staggered payments offer counties breathing space without encouraging over-reach. While the finer points of those guardrails remain private, Gould has said in recent weeks that the governing body “doesn’t want counties loading up on short-term costs that return to bite them later”.
Next steps
For Yorkshire, much hinges on how swiftly the debt can be cleared and whether revenue from the Hundred – central payments continue even after the sale – stabilises the annual budget. Any surplus is likely to be channelled into refurbishing Headingley, shoring up the playing staff and, crucially, bolstering community programmes that have suffered during austerity.
Club insiders accept that trust must still be rebuilt with members after a bruising period that combined financial strain, governance upheaval and well-publicised cultural issues. Clearing the books, they argue, is a necessary first stride rather than a final destination.
