This is a post on the ECB's accounts for the year to January 2019.  My review of the 2018 accounts is here and of the 2017 accounts is here .  The ECB had income of £172m in the period and costs of £168m, leaving it with a £4m surplus. The ECB had an accumulated surplus at 31 January 2019 of £10.5m.  This is a big reduction from the £70m of reserves held at January 2016 and is, to a large extent, caused by additional payments to the first class counties that, in my opinion, were made in exchange for the ECB assuming  control of domestic cricket in the UK.  So Is The ECB In "Difficulties" There was an interesting piece by George Dobell in cricinfo suggesting the ECB was experiencing cash flow difficulties.  As regular readers will know I don't like the way the ECB runs English cricket and the idea of Colin Graves and Tom Harrison reaching down the back of the sofa for emergency funds is appealing.  But I don't really think it's true.  Although the

Durham Cricket Community Interest Company, filed its accounts for  the 12 months to 30 September 2018.  The accounts were due to be filed at Companies House on the 30th June 2019 but the director's report and auditor's opinion weren't signed until the 27th August. The company's auditors, Pricewaterhouse Coopers, resigned after signing the accounts and will be replaced by RMT for the 2019 audit.   Even though most of its financing (from the council and the ECB) is interest free Durham lost £1.1m in the period and had a cash outflow of £0.5m with ECB funding increasing by £0.1m to £1.9m. After the balance sheet date Durham entered into new loans with Invocap and Atom Bank.  The Invocap loan is guaranteed by Durham chief executive Tim Bostock.   None of this is great but it remains to be seen whether the additional funding from the ECB of £1m a year is sufficient to put Durham in a secure financial position.

It was a difficult time for the northern county cricket club.  Financial hubris, encouraged by the ECB, had seen it pile a high risk project onto a debt laden structure and, when the project failed, there was insufficient cash to pay its burgeoning debts.  It had to turn to the ECB for financing. Well you know the rest of the story, the ECB demands a high price for the bail out, the county is taken into special measures, penalised with relegation to the second division, swingeing points deductions for the next two seasons, a reduced salary cap etc.  A very public humiliation. Except none of that happened, because this isn't the story of Durham's financial difficulties, but Yorkshire County Cricket Club's (YCCC).  (Do you see what I did there). What had brought Yorkshire to the brink of financial ruin was the staging, in 2010, of a Headingley test match between Australia and Pakistan.  You can see the logic, Pakistan supporting Yorkshire men and women would (hop

Durham is the baby of the 18 first class counties , admitted to the County Championship in 1992.  Before Durham came Glamorgan who gained first class status in 1921.  Northamptonshire (1905) were the only other county to join the championship in the twentieth century, all of the other counties were playing in the county championship prior to 1900. English domestic cricket is a remarkably stable affair with no county having become insolvent or gone into administration.  Remarkably this stability has been achieved against a background of a hundred years plus of financial crisis.  Pictures of crowds flocking to Lord's in the aftermath of World War Two are misleading.  As I found out whilst researching my book A War To The Knife small crowds, unbalanced budgets and reliance on distributions from Test cricket have long been a fact of life for many counties. The 1933 spring edition of The Cricketer commented: “It is satisfactory to find that in spite of adverse rumours first fr

A post providing some comparisons between the prestigious Bentley - Forbes Consulting rankings for  2017 - 2018 with the equally prestigious rankings for  2016 - 2017 . What I have done is to add up the figures for the 16 counties  surveyed for 2017 - 2018  (no Middlesex and Hampshire) and compared to the equivalent aggregates for 2016  - 2017, to provide a collective health check for all the counties. The good news is that in aggregate the financial position of county cricket improved.  In 2017 - 2018 the 16 counties had net assets in excess of liabilities of £67m compared to £57m in 2016 - 2017.  Better still, the £10m improvement in the position came about, mostly, due to a reduction in debt, rather than the asset side of the balance sheet increasing. The £10m improvement, is the profit for the period and can be split between an ongoing profit of roughly £4.5m and one off items of £5.5m.  The one off items are the fees for not staging test matches paid to Durham and

The prestigious Bentley Forbes Consulting rankings for 2017 - 2018 are out.  The rankings present a snap shot of the financial stability and sustainability of 16 of the 18 first class counties.  The rankings for 2016 - 2017 and some comments on methodology are  here . So without further ado: the rankings: {Please imagine a drum roll at this point} County Profit Assets Ranking Position Move Surrey 1 6 3.5 1 Level Glamorgan 5 3 4 2 Up 11 Somerset 2 7 4.5 3 Level Essex 8 2 5 4 Down 3 Leicestershire 7 5 6 5 Up 1 Nottinghamshire 4 8 6 5 Down 2 Sussex 14 1 7.5 7 Level Worcestershire 3 13 8 8 Up 2 Northamptonshire 13 4 8.5 9 Up 3 Gloucestershire 6 12 9 10 Up 1 Kent 10 9 9.5 11 Down 2 Derbyshire 9 10 9.5 11 Down 4 Durham 11 11 11 13 Up 1 Yorkshire 12 16 14 14 Up 1 Warwickshire 16 14 15 15 Up 1 Lancashire 15 15 15 16 Up 1 A few points to note. The counties reviewed have declined from 17 to 16, compared to 18 first class counties. As in the 2016 / 2017 rankin

This post is a review of the ECB accounts for the year to 31 January 2018.  I reviewed the ECB accounts for the period to 31 January 2017 here . I won't rehash my comments about the lack of transparency in the accounts, but will say that each year the ECB provides less information to its members and people with a strange interest in cricketing finances. I have already covered the disclosure in the accounts that a £2.5m payment was made to Glamorgan for not staging test matches despite statements to the contrary by ECB Chairman Colin Graves. For the second year in a row the ECB accounts show a large loss.  Income increased from £119m to £125m, but with expenditure of £156m, largely unchanged from 2017, there was a 2018 deficit of £30m. At first sight the numbers look odd as 2017 was expected to be a year of unusually high expenditure due to one off payments to the First Class Counties and note 20 the 2018 accounts discloses payments made to the First Class Counties,

A flurry of activity in the sale of broadcasting rights. First the BCCI signed a 5 year US $944m deal with Star for international matches in India.  This was quickly followed up by the Australian Cricket Board selling all its rights for $1,118m for 6 years. These deals compare with the ECB's  5 year a rrangement with Sky worth approximately $1,500m. The deals aren't strictly comparable, along with the perils of converting local currency amounts to US $ they have different start dates and there are different rules on how much can be put behind a pay wall in each country.  And the Indian government has forbidden India v Pakistan matches which would be a huge draw to a broadcaster. (How much would the ECB / ACB get for a program with no ashes tests)? Still on a simple per year basis the ECB comes out best with an annual fee of $300m with India and Australia all the way back on $190m each year.  Of course the six slogging, dancing girl bothering, elephant in the

I have gone through the most recent financial statements for the English first class counties,  made an estimate of the financial strength of each and given them a Bentley Forbes Consulting ( TM ) financial sustainability ranking.  The overall table looks like this. County      Profit Assets Ranking Position Essex   4   4   4   1 Surrey   1   7   4   1 Nottinghamshire   5   5   5   3 Somerset   2   8   5   3 Derbyshire   8   3   5   5 Leicestshire    6   6  6   6 Sussex  15   1  8   7 Middlesex  14   2  8   7 Kent     9   9  9   9 Worcestshire    3  15  9 10 Gloucestshire   7  12  9.5 11 Northamptonshire   11  13  12 12 Glamorgan   16  10  13 13 Durham     12  14  13 13 Yorkshire    10  17  13 15 Warwickshire   17  11  14 16 Lancashire   13  16  14 17        The approach is to rank the counties for profitability and balance sheet strength and combine the two measures in a sustainability ranking. The balance sheet strength is itself a combination of thre

I have pulled together a spreadsheet summarising income and costs for the 18 first class counties.  Data is taken from the most recent financial statements, with the exception of Surrey who have just filed their financial statements for the period to 31 January 2017, I'll update this post once I have a copy of these Surrey accounts. Middlesex don't seemed to have filed accounts for the period to 31 December 2016, although I think these are now overdue. A few points on the aggregate figures. The 18 first class counties made a combined loss before tax for the period of £2.6m.  Viewed in isolation this doesn't look too bad but it includes a Surrey profit of £3m.  Also most counties have taken on a significant amount of debt in the last decade.  For the counties making a loss / small profit the issue is are they able to pay off the debt as it falls due.  A particularly pertinent question for Durham, Glamorgan (both of whom have almost gone belly up in the last two year

A previous post  bemoaned the lack of transparency in the ECB accounts.   The excellent  By The Sightscreen  blog reveals a more forthcoming ECB.    As well as filing accounts at Companies House the ECB, as an employers association, files an annual return with the "Certification Officer" neither document is, generally, very informative.  The ECB normally attaches a set of accounts to the annual return. However, for the period to 31 January 2016 the ECB attached, not the public accounts filed with Companies House, but the ECB's own management accounts, providing a detailed analysis of income and expenditure for the period. If you would like to take a look go to  link .  It's the 2015 return you are after (for the period to 31 January 2016). By The Sightscreen has some fun with the numbers disclosed - including £275k for "public policy and foreign relations" which  presumably includes the cost of keeping Giles Clark fed and watered and another £120k o

The BCCI has announced the media rights deal for the  IPL . The deal is for rupees 16,347 crore, about $2.55b or £1.96b for 5 years. At £0.4b per year the deal is worth roughly double the amount the ECB will get for all its UK media  rights both international and domestic.  The deal also dwarfs the BCCI's deal for international matches of just £0.45b for 6 years although that is up for renewal in  2018 . It will be interesting to see if the media rights deal for Indian international matches gets anywhere near the IPL figures.  The ICC's total revenue for an eight year cycle are quoted  as £1.9b. Clearly the IPL is the biggest beast in the cricketing jungle and there must be doubts over the continued relevance of international cricket in general and test cricket in particular.  This is worrying for cricketing supporters who (like me) see test cricket as a better game, both as a spectacle and morally, than the shorter forms. But there needs to be some cautio

One of the curios of the ECB accounts is payments made to a company called Reigndei. According to the accounts for the year to 31 January 2017 Reigndei is "An insurance company beneficially owned by the 18 first class counties, MCC and MCCA."  Presumably the ECB's payments are to insure against bad weather at international matches.   Reigndei is a very profitable entity.  In the period 2005 - 2017 premiums paid to Reigndei by the ECB were £6.3m greater than the claims paid to the ECB by Reigndei.  Reigndei also earns interest on premiums received and the true profitability would be somewhat higher.  As an international insurance company I don't think Reigndei would pay tax in Guernsey and there is no indication in the ECB accounts of any controlled foreign company tax charge in respect of Reigndei. What is not clear is what Reigndei does with the money it accumulates.  The company is resident in  Guernsey  and as a consequnce  there is no proper access to

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 E