England women’s cricket chief on the case for investment in The Hundred

While the first ever Olympic Games with an equal number of male and female athletes competing took place this summer, The Hundred has put its eight men’s and women’s cricket teams on an equal platform since its launch in 2021. Beth Barrett-Wild, director of the women’s professional game at the England and Wales Cricket Board, explores the impact that this strategy has had on its success, and how new investment can help to take it to the next level.

Earlier this month, London played host to both the eliminator and the final of this season’s edition of The Hundred. The eliminator was a London derby, with Oval Invincibles taking on London Spirit in the women’s competition, and it marked the third time the teams have battled it out on the field during the 2024 competition, with their first match at Lord’s earlier in August drawing a crowd of 17,810.

The match, which finished in a dramatic tie in a final-ball thriller (every ball really does count, as the competition’s central campaign suggests), contributed to a significant milestone.  

Across that weekend more than 50,000 fans piled through the turnstiles at some of the most iconic venues in the world – from Edgbaston to Trent Bridge, Lord’s to Headingley – to watch the best female players on the planet in action.  It was another record-breaking couple of days for The Hundred, which continues to break new ground for women’s sport, and has now welcomed more than 1m fans to watch women’s matches since it launched in 2021.

Its growth has unequivocally turbocharged the trajectory of women’s cricket but, more importantly, is helping to shift perceptions about what the sport is and who it is for.  The competition this year once again broke the global record for total attendance at a women’s cricket competition, with 320,000 spectators.

Some 540,000 tickets were sold for this year’s competition, with 41 per cent bought by families and 31 per cent by female fans. Of those who came to watch The Hundred in 2024, 30 per cent were new to cricket and, across the four years of the competition, the competition has welcomed more than 400,000 junior ticket-holders through its doors. On television, this year’s competition has seen over 11m unique viewers.

And this visibility and accessibility is encouraging more people – women and girls, in particular – to pick up a bat and ball. In 2023, we saw that the number of people playing, attending or following cricket across England and Wales grew by 2m, with a 22 per cent increase in the number of women and girls playing at a recreational level.  My daughter was one of them.

Smashing records for women’s sport

Since its inception in 2021, The Hundred has placed gender emphasis at its core and pushed for parity across the men’s and women’s competitions.  In a crowded sports and entertainment market it is totally unique in its authentic co-presentation of the men’s and women’s teams, providing equal levels of prominence to male and female players, along with equal prize money at the end.

Through The Hundred, elite women’s teams are playing at big venues like Lord’s, The Kia Oval, and Emirates Old Trafford, every day for four weeks. This creates narrative, scale and, alongside every ball being live on Sky Sports, with coverage also on the BBC, unprecedented levels of visibility for the women’s game and its world-class players.

Each year the quality of the international stars on show has increased.  This year, India’s Smriti Mandhana returned for a fourth year at Southern Brave, Australia’s Ellyse Perry re-signed for Birmingham Phoenix, while two of the biggest names in the women’s game, Ash Gardner (Trent Rockets) and Meg Lanning (London Spirit) played in their debut seasons.  They all lined up beside homegrown icons such as Heather Knight and Sophie Ecclestone.

With The Hundred being a key instigator for growth in the wider game, we’re now looking for new partners that will bring further skills and expertise to continue this growth trajectory.  In addition to providing crucial new investment, this will ensure that we can continue to expand and enhance the match day experience, reach new audiences around the world, and retain and attract the best international stars into the competition.

Taking The Hundred to the next level

Promisingly, growth in the women’s game is a key factor at play for speculative investors. The opportunity to invest in a completely aligned men’s and women’s short-form cricket team is unique and comes at a time when women’s sport is reaching new heights.

In 2024, Deloitte predicts that revenues from elite women’s sport will surpass £1bn, while investment funds have launched with the sole focus of partnering with women’s sport and a surge in demand is pushing the value of women’s teams higher.   

And in the best examples, investors are bringing much more than capital.  They are delivering new collaborations, strategies and initiatives to drive the professionalisation and profile of women’s sport for the long-term, reaching new fans and inspiring new participants.  

Professionalisation in cricket is already under way, with women’s players in The Hundred now earning up to £50,000 for the four-week competition, up from £15,000 in 2021.  But there’s still some way to go.  New investment will help salaries to continue to rise, which in turn will help to ensure the star power on show in The Hundred can keep pace with the global player market.

As the thousands of fans in the stands every day will tell you, the quality on the pitch is an incredible showcase of the very best of cricket, across both the men’s and women’s games.  New investment will now support teams in The Hundred to grow further and go faster, create more opportunities for fans to access the sport, and show more women and girls around the world that cricket is a game for them.