ECB Reveals £10m Stanford Deal

The England and Wales Cricket Board’s deal with Texan billionaire Sir Allen Stanford has been finally revealed – five winner-takes-all £10m Twenty20 games held in the Caribbean.

The games will see the England team take on Stanford’s Super Stars at Sir Allen’s cricket ground in Antigua with the first match on 1st November.

Winning players will receive £500,000 each, with another £1m split between the rest of the squad and coaches.

The remaining £3.5m will be divided between the England and West Indies Cricket Boards.

It is believed to be the richest team prize for a single sporting match. The deal will be for five years with a match being held annually in November.

The 58-year old Stanford, who first made his fortune in real estate in the 1980s, has struck the agreement as part of an ongoing initiative to try and reverse the decline of West Indies cricket.

He has been bankrolling a local Twenty20 tournament in the Caribbean since 2006, with $2m prize money on offer, and the Stanford Super Stars will be made up of these players.

He commented: ‘It is one night, winner-takes-all $20m. Twenty20 is what’s going to grab the TV revenue and it’s the future of sport, make no mistake about that. This (series) will expose the sport to a whole different market that has never seen cricket, nor would they be interested to see the game via a Test-match series.

‘You have to remember T20 was born right here in England, I didn’t invent it, the English invented it. We are working with the England and Wales Cricket Board to take it to another level. They are, in my opinion, the best drivers going into the future for all of us to benefit from.

‘We had to create something that had never been done before and take cricket to the previous level in the Caribbean, we have not been running our sport at a professional level.’