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US-led consortium’s winning bid stood at £295 million
LONDON: A consortium of US-based Indian techies have won the bid to own 49% of The Hundred‘s Lord’s franchise London Spirit.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Palo Alto Networks CEO Nikesh Arora, Times Internet Limited vice chairman Satyan Gajwani, Adobe CEO Shantanu Narayen, Silverlake Technology CEO Egon Durban, Sequoia’s Jim Goetz and two others are part of the consortium that participated in an e-auction process on Friday to grab the franchise.
On Thursday, Reliance-led Mumbai Indians had won the bid to own The Hundred’s other London franchise Oval Invincibles.
Sources say the US-led consortium’s winning bid stood at £295 million.
Arora, Pichai and Narayen are known to be big cricket fans while Nadella co-owns Major League Cricket’s (MLC) franchise Seattle Orcas, and Gajwani owns and runs Willow TV, cricket’s biggest streaming platform in the west, as well as Cricbuzz website.
£295 million is the 100% bid value of which the consortium will pay 49%. The remaining 51% will remain with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) as part of The Hundred’s business model.
In a separate bidding process, MLC franchise Washington Freedom won the Cardiff franchise for £65 million.
