What I’ve learned about English cricket finances in seven weeks chairing Sussex
Seven weeks as chair of Sussex Cricket and no major jolts to the view of the sport that I held while my nose was pressed to the window looking in, but lots of new detail to fill out my understanding of its challenges.
Some of these challenges are unique to cricket, others common to many sports struggling for oxygen in a crowded market.
Most intriguing to me – although that’s possibly a function of my nerdy interest in the economics of sport – has been the squad salary constraints embedded in the English county game.
Specifically, that no county spends close to its allowed ceiling, and that overall levels of expenditure are closely bunched in spite of counties’ wildly differing levels of revenue. Although widely recognised to be a game of ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, English county cricket is fiercely competitive as a consequence of this bunching.
Take a look at this summer’s competitions for evidence. If the ‘haves’ are defined as the seven counties that host both franchises in The Hundred and England men’s internationals, one might expect them to crowd the top of the County Championship table and fill finals slots in the two knockout competitions by virtue of their vastly superior income.
As it is, Somerset sit just two points off the top of the Championship with five matches to play; Northants won the T20 Blast; and the One Day Cup final will be contested by Middlesex and Leicestershire. There may yet be a ‘have-not’ clean sweep of trophies in 2026.
The England and Wales Cricket Board is currently consulting counties on a new set of financial sustainability guardrails intended to help them help themselves to a healthy future.
Adherence to constraints on player costs are already part of the current system but may be tweaked going forwards. Not much more than a tweaking of this element is required, however, because of the clear gap between current squad outlays and their permitted cap.
Spending on player salaries is subject to the ECB’s Team Salary Payment (TSP) regulations. A county’s TSP total includes not only wages and standard employment add-ons, but various additional costs such as flights for overseas players and agents’ fees.
Payments for players called up by England or signed by franchises in The Hundred are positive offsets. The TSP spending cap for men’s squads is currently £3.1m for the 16 counties outside London and £3.4m for both Middlesex and Surrey.
Last year, 12 of the 18 counties had a TSP outcome within a tight spread from £1.6m to £1.9m. None got close to the caps.
For some, spending levels were constrained by an imperative to protect their overall P&L accounts; for the more wealthy, conscious decisions will have been made about what they needed and/or wanted to do to be competitive on the pitch. In helping level the playing field, such self-constraint is a gift to county cricket.
Members and supporters of more prosperous county sides might be irked that their leaders do not commit more to playing budgets. Others might wonder how any county can maintain a professional playing squad capable of covering all three major competitions and allow for injuries and international call-ups within current spending levels.
You need to look through an England lens to answer these questions about the English game. As the recent Leonard Curtis report on the finances of the counties highlighted, on average around 30 per cent of county income comes from the ECB. In turn, the governing body relies on revenue from its broadcast rights deals focused on the England men’s teams to be able to provide this support.
With attendances at county matches typically numbering in the low thousands, with commensurately little associated revenue, it is small wonder that everyone feels a duty to develop talent that might help stock future England sides and so keep the economic cycle turning.
As to the players themselves, county cricket is perhaps unique among major team sports in fielding sides with a very broad spread of experience so as to meet limited budget ambitions.
Of course, the more experienced players can significantly enhance their county salaries if they are picked up in franchise auctions around the globe and/or are selected to represent their country. County cricket is the foundation on which an individual can attempt to build a lucrative, peripatetic cricketing portfolio.
As has been well reported, and I’ve highlighted here previously, at Sussex Cricket we are currently working under ‘special measures’ imposed by the ECB after the county ran up substantial losses. One key measure is that we have to work within a TSP limit of £1.8m in 2027, about £0.5m below this season’s spending.
This clearly necessitates changes to our current squad, but I’m reassured that the reality of English cricket means we will still be both in the financial pack and competitive on the pitch next season – and remaining an integral part of English cricket’s ecosystem.
Two Sussex cricketers, Jofra Archer and Ollie Robinson, opened the bowling for England in the first Test against Pakistan. The last Sussex pair to do so were Arthur Gilligan and Maurice Tate in 1924 – they took all 10 wickets between them as South Africa were bowled out for 30 in their first innings as well as nine of the second innings wickets. The 10th was a run out.
Turn up to 11
I’ve often been asked why I’ve taken on the Sussex chair in recent weeks – an occurrence in every sporting role. One answer is that board seats in sport, for all the issues they bring, do generate heightened pleasure and pain from the experience of watching and following the action. It is as if colours are brighter and sounds sharper, for worse as well as for better.
Early evening last Saturday I had two windows open on my screen at home. On one Sussex lost by one wicket to Warwickshire in the County Championship at Edgbaston, having bowled an incredible 13 balls with the scores tied.
At the same time, in the other window, GB’s wheelchair rugby team lost out to Australia in the semi-final of the World Championships in Sao Paolo.
Those two imposters and all that…
Ed Warner is chair of Sussex Cricket and GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com