Kent County Cricket Club are seeking to buy their ground in Beckenham and develop the site to allow them to bid to become a third London Hundred team when the tournament expands.
Kent lease the site in southeast London, which is situated next to Crystal Palace FC’s training ground. There are 11 years left on the lease and the county were due to write to their members on Wednesday setting out their plans to try to buy the site and develop it into a premier facility. That would help them put forward a good case to the ECB that it should be the home of a new Hundred team when the tournament expands in size from its present eight teams.
Although discussions about the future of the Hundred are still taking place, it is set to expand in size to probably ten teams after the present broadcast deal runs out in 2028.
As revealed by the Times, the tournament is set to receive a huge injection of private investment later in the year when the ECB auctions off 49 per cent stakes in each of the teams with a 51 per cent stake being handed over to the host venues. They can, in turn, sell off a further stake to investors (although some, including Surrey, have said they would not be interested in selling any of their stake preferring to keep control themselves).
Valuations of the Hundred teams have shown that the London teams would have a significantly higher value to private investors and, therefore, a third London team when the tournament expands could raise significant further investment.
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The site is 24 acres, which is bigger than the footprint of the Kia Oval and Lord’s combined, and already houses the second-largest indoor school in London. Kent already host a number of men’s and women’s matches there as well as offering it for use as a base for overseas touring sides. Australia used Beckenham as their training base before the Ashes last summer and gave positive feedback about the quality of the square and the facilities. West Indies will play a warm-up match against a combined counties XI there before the Test series this summer.
The ground has four major London boroughs surrounding it — Lewisham, Greenwich, Bromley and Bexley — which have a combined population of 1.2 million people with a varied age and ethnically diverse demographic. Attracting spectators from outside of the traditional cricket fanbase is a key objective of the Hundred and Beckenham would tick many boxes.
Canterbury will remain Kent’s headquarters and the base for the county’s men’s matches but the development of this site would give them an option to play other matches, particularly making it the base for women’s and girls’ cricket in Kent as well as the potential Hundred team.
It had been mooted that one option for expansion of the Hundred would be to host two teams at Lord’s — the London Spirit team plus another owned by MCC, but it is understood that MCC do not regard such an option as being viable and would need members’ approval (which is not guaranteed).
Kent’s plans are in the early stages but the revenue yielded from private investment into the Hundred, for which each county is initially expected to receive a £5 million lump sum when the ECB auctions off its stakes in the teams, could help Kent’s financial plan for the development of Beckenham.
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The county are exploring sustainable ways of developing the ground into a pop-up stadium which could involve having stands that could accommodate at least 12,000 people, put up for the month of August when the Hundred takes place and downsized for the rest of the year. The plan would use the same sort of stadium technology that is being used for the new stadium in New York which is being used for the T20 World Cup in June.
Decisions about the future of the Hundred will be taken by the counties, MCC and ECB in the coming months with a prospectus for buying stakes in the teams sent out to prospective investors in the summer with the equity auction expected to take place in the autumn.
