Facts verified — the story is real: Surrey sold 49% of the Oval Invincibles to Reliance Industries (Mumbai Indians’ owners) for a reported £60m, keeping a 51% majority, with the team rebranding to MI London from 2026. Here’s the article.
When the Oval Invincibles lifted their fifth title in five seasons last summer, the name on the trophy still read as it had since The Hundred began in 2021. From 2026, it will not. Both the men’s and women’s teams that Surrey County Cricket Club has run at Kennington will take the field as MI London — the newest branch of the Mumbai Indians empire, and the first time an Indian Premier League franchise has put its own name above the door of an English domestic side.
The change follows Reliance Industries Limited’s purchase of a 49% stake in the franchise, a deal reported to be worth around £60m and finalised in December 2025 after months of protracted negotiation. Surrey, who host the team at The Oval, retain a 51% majority. The result is a hybrid nobody in county cricket has run before: an English institution founded in 1845, now sharing its most valuable modern asset with the richest ownership group in the global game.
What has changed
The most visible shift is the badge. The Invincibles branding — five titles across both competitions, the most successful record in the tournament’s short history — disappears in favour of the blue-and-gold Mumbai Indians identity that already spans four continents. MI London joins MI Cape Town in South Africa’s SA20, MI Emirates in the UAE’s ILT20, MI New York in Major League Cricket and the Mumbai Indians women’s side in the WPL, alongside the flagship five-time IPL champions. It becomes the seventh team in a network operating across five countries.
For Surrey, the £60m injection is the headline. The club valued the wider Hundred sell-off at roughly £123m and has emerged from the process with both a cash windfall and a partner whose recruitment, analytics and player-development machinery is among the most sophisticated in franchise cricket. Access to the Mumbai Indians scouting network, and to a shared pool of coaching expertise, is the kind of resource no county could build alone.
What has stayed the same
Crucially, the cricket remains rooted in south London. Surrey’s majority stake means home matches stay at The Oval, the ground’s operational control does not pass overseas, and the county’s own red-ball and 50-over programmes are untouched by the arrangement. Reliance bought a share of a franchise, not a takeover of a 180-year-old club, and the distinction matters to a membership that has watched other sports lose local identity to foreign capital.
The playing squad’s spine, too, carries over. The Invincibles were not a broken team in need of rescue — they were the benchmark the rest of The Hundred measured itself against. Reliance is inheriting a winning structure rather than rebuilding a failing one, which sharpens the question of whether new ownership improves an already dominant side or simply attaches a global brand to it.
What the future holds
The strategic logic runs in both directions. For Reliance, MI London is a foothold in a market the IPL cannot directly reach, and a year-round pipeline that lets Mumbai Indians recruit, develop and rotate talent across overlapping seasons in England, India, South Africa, the UAE and the United States. For English cricket, it is proof of concept: The Hundred, long criticised as a costly experiment, has drawn eight-figure investment from the sport’s biggest names.
- Surrey retain a 51% majority; Reliance Industries hold 49%.
- The stake is reported at around £60m, against a franchise valuation of roughly £123m.
- Both the men’s and women’s teams rebrand to MI London from the 2026 season.
- The Invincibles won five titles in five years before the name change.
- MI London becomes Mumbai Indians’ seventh team across five countries.
The tension to watch is identity. Supporters who adopted the Invincibles will be asked to embrace a name imported from Mumbai, and how that lands at The Oval — on the terraces as much as on the scoreboard — will shape whether this model is repeated across the competition. What is not in doubt is the direction of travel. English domestic cricket has entered the era of the global franchise multi-club, and MI London is its first English word.
**Sources:** [ESPNcricinfo — Oval Invincibles rebrand as MI London](https://www.espncricinfo.com/story/oval-invincibles-rebrand-as-mi-london-as-hundred-deal-is-finalised-1514252) · [France 24](https://www.france24.com/en/live-news/20251203-oval-invincibles-renamed-mi-london-in-latest-hundred-franchise-deal) · [Reliance/Surrey partnership release (RIL)](https://www.ril.com/sites/default/files/2025-12/MR_RIL_and_Surrey_announce_their_partnership_in_Oval_Invincibles_franchise_in_The_Hundred.pdf) · [BBC Sport — Ambanis & Brady group agree Hundred deals](https://feeds.bbci.co.uk/sport/cricket/articles/crm7dz02emxo)
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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