Cricket Australia will invite bids for 100 per cent of the Melbourne Renegades licence — the first Big Bash franchise placed on the open market — after its board approved private investment in the BBL and WBBL. The merchant bank Raine Group is running the process, completion is targeted before Christmas, and new owners are expected to be in place for the 2027-28 season. Among the parties weighing a move are owners of teams in England’s Hundred, several of whom met Cricket Australia officials during the northern summer.
The Renegades go first, but on Cricket Australia’s terms
The Renegades will be run by Cricket Australia in a caretaker capacity through the coming season, with the sale having no bearing on the 2026-27 BBL or WBBL competitions. CA has set an undisclosed reserve price and retains a long list of controls: international scheduling and player availability, the salary cap, media rights, approval rights over any incoming investor, and sign-off on changes to the club’s name and brand.
That last clause matters. The fear across Australian cricket is that a buyer arrives, rebrands the club to slot into a global portfolio, and hollows out a team that has played out of Docklands since 2011. CA’s answer is that ownership can change hands without the competition’s architecture changing with it.
CA chair Mike Baird framed the decision as protective rather than opportunistic: “By opening the door to private investment in the Big Bash Leagues, Cricket Australia is taking a deliberate step to strengthen and secure the long-term future of the game.” Chief executive Todd Greenberg had already conceded the direction of travel in May, calling private investment in the Big Bash “inevitable”.
Why The Hundred’s owners are circling
The reference point is 12 months old and enormous. The England and Wales Cricket Board’s sale of stakes in the eight Hundred teams valued the competition’s franchises at more than £975m collectively and generated in excess of £500m — a figure that reset every governing body’s assumptions about what a domestic short-format league is worth. Indian Premier League ownership groups took positions in several teams; a Silicon Valley consortium paid a reported £145m for 49 per cent of London Spirit.
Those same investors now hold assets in England but nothing in Australia, and the Big Bash offers something The Hundred does not: a January window, a mature broadcast market, and a women’s competition, the WBBL, that has been the strongest domestic product in the women’s game for a decade. BBC Sport understands a number of Hundred owners have expressed interest in investing in the Big Bash after meetings with CA officials.
The strategic logic is portfolio-building. An owner with teams in the IPL, the Hundred, the ILT20 and Major League Cricket can move players, coaches and commercial partners across a near-continuous calendar. A Big Bash licence closes the last significant gap in that map.
A split competition and an unresolved pay deal
Cricket Australia wanted a league-wide sale. It did not get one. New South Wales and Queensland opposed the proposal, forcing CA into what it calls a “self-determination model” — each state association decides whether and when to sell a stake in its own franchise, with 49 per cent the ceiling for those going down the minority-stake route rather than a full licence sale.
The result is a competition divided:
- Open to investment: Melbourne Renegades (full sale under way), Melbourne Stars, Hobart Hurricanes, Perth Scorchers
- Reluctant: Sydney Sixers, Sydney Thunder, Brisbane Heat, Adelaide Strikers
Cricket NSW’s objection is not ideological. Its argument is that a private equity injection treats a symptom — cash flow — while leaving the structural problems in Australian cricket’s finances untouched. Sell equity once and the money is spent; the underlying model is unchanged.
There is a further obstacle. The Australian Cricketers’ Association has warned that a renegotiated revenue-sharing agreement must be settled before CA completes any franchise sale. Australian players have held a fixed percentage of the game’s revenue since the bitter 2017 pay dispute, and nobody has yet defined how proceeds from a licence sale, or profits generated by a privately owned club, are counted within that pool. Resolve it badly and CA risks a second industrial fight in a decade.
Get the Renegades sale away before Christmas at a strong number, and the reluctant states will face a harder question next winter. Miss the reserve, and the self-determination model becomes a polite way of describing a competition that could not agree on its own future.
Sources: [cricket.com.au](https://www.cricket.com.au/news/4573506/big-bash-privatisation-melbourne-renegades-sale-cricket-australia-bbl-wbbl), [Yahoo Sports / BBC Sport](https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/cricket-australia-opens-big-bash-105633560.html), [CricTracker](https://www.crictracker.com/cricket-news/cricket-australia-to-proceed-with-bbl-privatisation-despite-nsw-and-queensland-opposition-8535/), [Business Standard](https://www.business-standard.com/sports/business/melbourne-renegades-up-for-sale-as-ca-opens-bbl-to-private-investors-126090800448_1.html)
**Note on one detail:** the £145m London Spirit figure and the IPL-owner participation in the Hundred sale come from the 2025 ECB process rather than today’s reporting — verified as widely reported, but flag it if your desk wants a tighter sourcing standard. Everything else above is drawn from the sources listed.
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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