Cricket’s dirty secret: Unpaid players, rogue officials and bad governance Sport Business In many ways, these are heady days for cricket. A return to the Olympics in LA in 2028 promises to take a sport with pockets of fervent support to new audiences; The Hundred has shown the game’s appeal to deep-pocketed investors; and the recent series between England and India delivered thrills and spills in the [...]
Gianni Infantino, Jay Shah and the rise of sport’s super-execs Sport Business Infantino at Fifa and Shah at the ICC are styling themselves as super-execs like Musk and Zuckerberg but it won’t end well, warns Matt Readman. In sport, the best referees go unnoticed. They quietly manage the game, letting play flow and leaving the athletes to shine. Occasionally they must enforce the law, but they are [...]
Fans and athletes both lose in sport’s endless entertainment loop Sport Business New tournaments, expanding global championships, tours of dubious sporting merit and very little rest – isn’t it time we gave our athletes a break, asks Ed Warner? If only the world wasn’t spherical, maybe then we wouldn’t have lost the sporting seasons. As it is, summer bleeds from northern hemisphere to southern, which sends winter [...]
ICC set to create cricket game to rival Fifa June 16, 2025 Cricket’s governing body the ICC and its 12 members – including England – have launched an expression of interest to develop a mobile game. The ICC hopes to use a cricket version of Fifa to change the way fans engage with the sport, encouraging a new form of fandom. The process is set to see [...]
2025 Champions Trophy was most watched ever, says ICC May 22, 2025 The 2025 ICC Men’s Champions Trophy became the most watched edition of the tournament ever, global cricket chiefs have revealed. The 15 matches, hosted by Pakistan and the United Arab Emirates, gathered 368bn global views – a 19 per cent increase on the last edition in 2017, according to the International Cricket Council (ICC). Audience [...]
World Test Championship: Prize money doubled for Lord’s final May 15, 2025 Australia or South Africa stand to win a record £2.7m in next month’s World Test Championship final at Lord’s after the International Cricket Council more than doubled prize money. The runners-up in the one-off match in north London on 11-15 June will bank £1.6m, which is more than the £1.2m the winners of the first [...]
Pat Cummins: Top players should take pay cuts to save Test cricket May 3, 2025 Australia captain Pat Cummins has suggested that leading international players should take a pay cut to help save Test cricket. Cummins says he would be open to accepting a lower central contract as the price for providing more funding to the smaller nations to ensure they can continue to play and compete in the Test arena. The [...]
England cricket chiefs blasted for ‘refusing to hold India to account’ April 21, 2025 England and Australia have been castigated for a “refusal to hold India to account” after allowing the cricket-mad nation to tighten its vice-like grip on the game. India now boasts the chair of the International Cricket Council, Jay Shah, to go along with the largest share of revenues from the game and the world’s leading [...]
Afghanistan coach Trott admits ‘concern’ about gender apartheid February 25, 2025 Afghanistan cricket coach Jonathan Trott admits he is “concerned” by the gender apartheid enforced by the Taliban regime which has led to calls for an England boycott. The England and Wales Cricket Board rejected a plea from nearly 200 UK politicians to refuse to play Afghanistan at the men’s Champions Trophy on Wednesday in Pakistan. [...]
Ahead of the Game: Tottenham in crosshairs as Ratcliffe eyes more cuts February 19, 2025 Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos are set to continue cutting their investment in sport beyond Manchester United with the company’s commercial deal with Tottenham Hotspur unlikely to be renewed. Spurs signed a five-year contract with Ineos Grenadier as their official 4×4 vehicle partner in 2022, having previously partnered with Ineos Hygienics as official hand sanitiser [...]