THE ENGLAND and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) announced this week that Investec, the international specialist bank and asset manager, has become the new title sponsor of English Test match cricket for the next ten years.
The partnership will run until 2021 and is the longest sponsorship agreement secured in the ECB’s history. Frontloaded confirmed the value of the deal at £50m (£5m per year).
Under the terms of the deal, which will take effect next summer when England play the West Indies and South Africa, Investec will receive a comprehensive range of sponsorship and advertising rights including ticketing, hospitality and access to the England players.
The London and Johannesburg-based firm becomes only the third company ever to sponsor Test match cricket in England and succeeds the energy provider npower, whose ten-year association with English cricket concluded at the end of the 2011 season. The latest renewal between npower and the ECB, a two-year deal signed in 2009, saw the energy brand paying around £4m per year.
Investec’s title sponsorship of English Test match cricket was first reported in August as a four-year deal, beginning in 2012 running through 2015 and valued at £20m (£5m per year). This however, was not officially announced since the ECB was pushing for a longer term commitment. The length of the confirmed contract, coupled with a substantial increase in the annual commercial investment to English cricket, makes the deal a highly impressive coup for the ECB – England’s rise to the number one spot in the ICC Test Rankings in August this year undoubtedly a powerful bargaining tool.
The ECB will be seen as a direct replacement for Investec’s sponsorship funds having ended its commercial partnership with the RFU, England rugby’s governing body, earlier this year after a 12-year association.