In its accounts for the year to 31 January the England and Wales Cricket Board shows costs of £157m split between costs of sales of £20m and administration costs of £137m.
But there is nothing in the accounts that explains how the money is spent. There is nothing wrong in the lack of disclosure in terms of UK GAAP or The Companies Act but as the ECB is a public benefit entity receiving funding from Sports England, additional disclosure would be best practice.
Reading through the accounts it is possible to identify certain items of expenditure and these are set out in the table at the foot of this post.
The source column in the table identifies where in the 2017 accounts information is disclosed. The biggest expense is the £66m paid to the first class and minor counties, and the the MCC (not clear why ECB is making payments to the MCC. The ECB is based at Lord's but presumably this is rent free / contribution to costs only.) If you add the payments made by the England and Wales Cricket Trust and those to the Irish and Scottish boards, and the Professional Cricketers Association the expense of payments to the "wider game" is £75m or 55% of the total expenditure for the period.
To an extent calling this an expense is mis - leading (I'm not quibbling with the accounting treatment). League cricket, minor county cricket and the first class counties are all part of a cricketing pyramid. At the top of the pyramid is international cricket run by the ECB. Inevitably the bulk of cricket's revenues accrue to the ECB but these revenues are dependent on the the base of the pyramid. The £75m given to the wider game is as much the operation of a pool of revenue as it is an expense.
The £75m is higher than in previous periods as the ECB paid an additional £23m to the first class counties. I don't think I'm being unduly cynical in characterising these as inducements to get the counties to agree to the ECB's reform proposals and in particular the new, city based, 20/20 competition due to start in 2020.
The additional payments, in part, explain the ECB making a loss of £37m in 2017 although again the loss represents transfers to the counties so it is really akin to moving money out of one trouser pocket and into another.
The other big item of expenditure is salary costs of £28m up from £26m in 2016 and equal to 20% of total costs. The ECB had 287 employees in the period: 42 players, 28 umpires, 66 (!) coaching staff, 25 game support (?) 59 development (?) and 67 admin. The only director who receives payments (Presumably Tom Harrison Chief Executive) earns £660k. The other directors are presumably giving up their time for free which is a good show.
If we take the total expenses of £157m and deduct the identified expenses of £108m we are left with a rump of £49m. Some of this will be travel and subsistence costs for ECB teams, visiting sides umpires etc but hard to believe this would much more than £15m. What the rest of it represents is not clear. It could be it is all money well spent and it is always easy to overlook true costs when looking from the outside. But this only takes us back to my first point; the ECB should provide a transparent analysis of how it is spending its revenues.
| ECB Costs | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| £000 | Source | ||
| Payments to first class counties, MCC and minor counties | 66,567 | Note 19 | |
| Grants from England and Wales Cricket Trust | 6,763 | Note 19 | |
| Irish Cricket Union Cricket Scotland and PCA | 1,640 | Note 19 | |
| Insurance Premiums to Reigndei | 2,053 | Note 19 | |
| Staff costs | 27,821 | Note 4 | |
| Forexchange losses | 225 | Note 3 | |
| Operating lease rentals | 935 | Note 3 | |
| Depreciation and amortisation | 2,025 | Note 3 | |
| Fees to auditors (KPMG) | 138 | Note 3 | |
| Total costs identified | 108,167 | ||
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