Executive Salaries in County Cricket

This post is a follow up to a salary cap for county chief executives which looked at the amounts paid to Key Management Personnel at the first class cricket counties.  I've now updated this for 2018 and 2019

 

			2019	2018
Derbyshire			164,851	156,974
Durham			165,127	238,246
Essex			577,723	467,881
Glamorgan			558,102	423,277
Hampshire			421,499	523,405
Kent			554,286	492,375
Lancashire			1,448,110	950,460
Leicestershire			128,335	136,368
Nottinghamshire			511,575	477,821
Somerset			142,253	97,716
Sussex			610,949	545,659
Surrey			1,216,000	1,063,000
Warwickshire			772,741	629,871
Yorkshire			856,983	654,025
			8,128,534	6,857,078

Although tempting, it's not really fair to use the table for county by county comparisons as there is no fixed definition of Key Management Personnel.  But year on year comparisons of the total paid to county chief executives and other senior management are more valid and the table shows the amount paid increased by 18% between 2018 & 2019.  Quite a pay rise.

The increase isn't necessarily all down to increased salaries there may be an inflation in the number of KMP as well.  For instance Lancashire opened their hotel in 2019 and presumably that has led to more senior management.  

The question is whether both the level and the rate of increase of KMP salaries are appropriate?  In my opinion the answer is no on both counts.  The rate of increase is particularly concerning. Money flowed into English cricket via The World Cup and home Ashes series in 2019, but that seems to have ratcheted up the amount paid to senior administrators, which might set a new level for other, less prosperous, years.  

I think the answer here is to put a hard limit on the amount any one person can earn working for a county cricket club.  There's room for debate about where that limit should be - around about £200k seems right.  After all a salary cap for players is well established.  

* Four counties not shown, Worcestershire and Gloucestershire claim all their key positions are filled by unpaid committee members, Northants file abbreviated accounts without KMP disclosure and Middlesex can't get anything right