Ed Warner on the deluge of work that is triggered by the end of cricket’s County Championship, from recruitment and sponsorship to strategic planning for a possible fall in media rights revenue.

The sun never sets on modern day cricket. Just ask the Australian squad, five matches into a 21-Test stretch across 12 months and under the cosh from both national media and past players. Fancy a swift cricket fix this weekend? There’s a clutch of matches in the Abu Dhabi T10 tournament that starts on Saturday. You’ll find them in the UK on Premier Sports.

I had thought that my first off-season as a county chair would be an opportunity to de-stress, but was swiftly disabused of the notion. If anything, the workload stepped up once stumps were pulled for the final time in the English summer (or more accurately, early autumn), and Sussex’s players scattered on holidays, international duty or overseas employment.

As a fan, the end of the domestic season is an opportunity for other sporting interests to crowd in. As an administrator, autumn is the season of hellos and goodbyes, recruitment interviews, sponsor and membership renewals, budgeting and strategic planning. It is as if a deluge of work has been held back by the activity of cricket itself. Only once that necessary focus on the sport is removed can preparations for the next season begin in earnest.

As has been well reported, including here, Sussex Cricket is operating under “special measures” imposed by the England and Wales Cricket Board as a result of past poor financial management and governance failings. While this has added to the list of essential tasks that are dominating our diaries right now, a trawl of specialist cricket media and announcements from other counties reveals that we are far from alone in having to reshape our leadership and playing roster. The merry-go-round of talent is spinning faster than ever, the money in global franchise cricket proving its accelerator.

Just this week we welcomed new men’s head coach Matt Walker to his first day of work at our County Ground. The first members of his squad will arrive back for fitness conditioning work in a couple of weeks. We were also delighted to announce the appointment of our new CEO, Beth Barrett-Wild, who has most recently spent 13 years at the ECB in leadership roles in women’s cricket, including as tournament director at this summer’s ICC Women’s T20 World Cup. The response to Beth from within cricket and sport more widely has been phenomenally positive. In between, we appointed five new directors, completing a refresh of the board that began earlier in the year.

“The opportunity to lead and help shape the future of the oldest professional cricket club in the world is something eight-year-old Beth could only have dreamt of.”

Beth Barrett-Wild on her appointment as Sussex Cricket CEO

In the next couple of days we will hopefully go public with the hiring of a new director of cricket. Next up after that, a couple of player signings and a high-profile former cricketer to be nominated to our members as Sussex Cricket’s next president.

All of this activity is taking place against the backdrop of movements elsewhere across the sport as well as rumours and misdirections. It may be that the growing propensity of many news outlets to report on overseas matches from UK sofas rather than sending correspondents abroad has increased the gossip quotient. Idle hands and minds and all that. Or, just as likely, editor demands for 24hr rolling updates. I confess it’s fun and frustrating in equal measure to be in the maelstrom.

The strategic planning at all first class counties, and the ECB itself as the sport’s national ruling body, is currently dominated by talk of the next round of TV rights deals, both here and internationally. The strong sense is that values will likely be flat at best, with a very real risk that they will be down. If so, the financial consequences would be felt throughout cricket.

The biggest single contributor to the ECB’s revenues is broadcast income. Remember, unlike the FA in football and the RFU in rugby, the ECB does not own its own ground and all the income opportunities that come with ownership of Wembley and Twickenham. If the Indian TV market softens on cricket, that’s less money for the International Cricket Council, and hence less to be distributed by it to the ECB. If Sky TV in turn were to bid less for domestic cricket rights, that’s less income again for the ECB.

Forget next year’s Ashes and all the talk of steep ticket prices, the only years in which the ECB turns a profit are when India play a Test series here. All down to TV revenue.

One link down the chain, payments from the ECB represent the biggest single element of Sussex’s income, as is the case for most of our county counterparts. You’ll appreciate, then, that there is an urgency about our search both for new commercial income and for different ways to monetise the use of our ground – after all, cricket is only played there around 50 times a year.

We need, too, to explore ways to inject fresh capital into our business while preserving the precious engagement with our members – both individuals and local clubs – who are our owners. Buy what is in effect a season ticket and you become an owner of Sussex Cricket, which is a fantastic protection for our heritage that stretches back to 1839, but can also be a constraint to investment. Too early to say what if anything we might want to propose on this front, but we can’t not have the debate given the imperative to be financially self-sustaining in a world of high inflation and possibly lower income trickling down from the sport’s Indian TV mothership.

For now, though, it’s diaries at the ready for the release of the 2027 fixture calendar later this month. Hope to see you in Hove in April and beyond!

Fight for the right to party

No doubt LA28 will be the brashest, noisiest Olympics and Paralympics yet. I’m intrigued in that context by a Sky News report that the US Olympic and Paralympic Committee has engaged advisors to try and sell a stake in Team USA’s commercial rights. 

Smart timing and a bold move if true – one which perhaps could only work in the massive American market. It may be too late for any fresh funds raised to boost medal prospects for 2028, but we should expect enormous US success on home soil regardless. And it might help Team USA put a lock on future medal tables. Over to you Team GB.

Seven nation army

If Andy Burnham wants a sense of the challenge in mounting a successful bid to host the 2040 Olympics and Paralympics in the north of England, he need only reflect on the list of seven nations that have formally expressed an interest in hosting the 2036 Games: Germany, Hungary, India, Qatar, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey.

The International Olympic Committee will conclude its choice of host in early 2029. Whichever countries get close but fall just short may well reload for 2040. My money remains on 2048 for Great Britain, 100 years on from the second London Olympics.

Ed Warner is chair of Sussex Cricket and GB Wheelchair Rugby and writes his sport column at sportinc.substack.com