The first post of 2023 is on executive pay at first class county cricket clubs. Figures are taken from 2021 accounts (or in a couple of instances accounts for the year to 31 January 2022) and are part of 2021 accounts post trilogy, along with the prestigious Bentley - Forbes Consulting rankings and 2021 membership figures.
A quick note on methodology - the figures in the table below are compiled from the Key Management Personnel (KMP) related parties disclosure in the individual county's financial statements. The table is in alphabetical order rather than having the highest paying county at the top as it's not really fair to compare counties as although all businesses have to disclose payments to KMP there is not set definition of what a KMP does. So you might get two counties (A&B) paying exactly the same wages for exactly the same roles, but county A might have a higher level of payments to KMP as A considers a particular role to be a KMP but B doesn't. That said KMP is rather more useful in looking at trends in payments to county cricket senior executives over time and there a few thoughts on that below, but first the 2021 results.
| | | 2021 |
|---|
| Derbyshire | | | 184,756 |
| Durham | | | 148,775 |
| Essex | | | 516,728 |
| Glamorgan | | | 551,801 |
| Gloucester | | | 381,749 |
| Hampshire | | | 119,100 |
| Kent | | | 583,398 |
| Lancashire | | | 1,349,117 |
| Leicestershire | | | 127,047 |
| Middlesex | | | 264,104 |
| Northamptonshire | | | NA |
| Nottinghamshire | | | 512,082 |
| Somerset | | | 197,953 |
| Sussex | | | 603,936 |
| Surrey | | | 1,005,000 |
| Warwicksire | | | 634,276 |
| Worcestershire | | | NA |
| Yorkshire | | | 1,925,700 |
| | | | 9,105,522 |
KMP Payments for 2020 were £7,340,319 so there is an apparent 34% year - year increase. However, this is mis - leading for four reasons. Firstly Gloucestershire disclosed a figure for 2021 KMP but not for 2020. Secondly Yorkshire showed a sharp increase to almost £2m in 2021 from less than £1m in 2020 but I think quite a large slice of that was severance payments for executives who negotiated a settlement in the wake of the Azeem Rafiq revelations. Thirdly Hampshire seemed to have restructured in 2021 to have a separate company for county cricket operations, making comparisons difficult. Finally 2020, the "year of covid" was a down year for KMP so the 2021 payments include a bit of bounce back. We can deal with points 1,2&3 by taking Yorkshire's, Gloucestershire's and Hampshire's figures out of the comparatives and when we do that the 2021 figure is a 9% increase on 2020, so still a fairly chunky rise but some of that will be covid related.
Going back to 2016 maybe gives a better feel for the overall trend for first class county executive pay. Now we have to do quite a bit of juggling with the data (Northamptonshire disclosed KMP in 2016 but not 2021, Middlesex & Gloucestershire disclosed in 2021 but not 2016 and for the reasons already covered Yorkshire's and Hampshire's 2021 figure aren't representative / consistent with the 2016 disclosure. Normalising for all of this, the increase from 2016 to 2021 is just shy of 20%, around 4% per year, roughly comparable to wage increases in the private sector. We are talking about well paid individuals but the rate of increase isn't egregious.
In terms of individual counties, KMP payments for Leicestershire declined very slightly between 2016 and 2021 and Warwickshire's payments only increased by a few pounds. Kent had the biggest increase in percentage terms and Lancashire in absolute terms (although it could be argued that Lancashire was a more complicated business in 2021 than in 2016).
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