An auction has valued eight English cricket teams at nearly £1 billion ($1.3 billion), a coup for the country’s newest competition that only launched four years ago.

The Hundred — a competition similar to T20 but where teams receive 100 balls in an innings — was launched in 2021 in the face of criticism for disrupting the domestic calendar, affecting the longer formats of the game, chiefly test cricket, and leaving at a disadvantage those among the 18 first-class counties who were not affiliated to a franchise.

English cricket has generated around $650M from the sale of stakes in the eight franchises in The Hundred to investors from India and the U.S.