Soaring heat, falling crowds - The Hundred's peculiar summer

As is now tradition, The Hundred reaches its conclusion just as the new football season starts and exhausted parents try to tough out the end of the summer holidays.

For cricket fans, journalists and pundits, this is also peak time for the eternal debate that rumbles on about the future of The Hundred, its relevances, and its success.

The key difference this season was that it was the first since the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) sold stakes of all eight teams to various private owners, which generated a staggering £975m.

But in a summer of soaring temperatures, The Hundred's crowds have stagnated.

The ECB confirmed on Friday their ticket sales had dropped just over 5% from last year, down to 550,000 from 580,000.

They also said they had predicted the inconsistency because of the scale of change, and that the two most successful years in terms of sales (2023 and 2025) coincided with an Ashes series and an India men's tour.

Despite the overall drop, the demographics remained on par with last year in terms of the tournament's target family audience, with 22% of tickets sold to juniors, 40% to families and 28% to female attendees.

Their messaging has remained understandably positive and confident in their product despite this dip in crowds.

However, with this year the sixth edition, The Hundred is no longer the shiny new toy, even despite the new names, new kits and new owners.

With fewer people in the stands, are we in another transitional period for one of British sport's most divisive tournaments?

After five years of building new franchises, Northern Superchargers became Sunrisers Leeds, the most dominant men's side switched from Oval Invincibles to MI London and Manchester Originals became the Super Giants.

Welsh Fire, Birmingham Phoenix, London Spirit and Trent Rockets kept their names and their kits pretty similar, while Southern Brave traded their green and black for navy and red.

Overall in terms of attendances this year, it was a slow start before a gradual recovery.

And the varying level of change at each team was reflected in the numbers at the eight different venues.

Numbers at Headingley and Old Trafford - where their teams have been completely rebranded - have dropped, while Southampton's Utilita Bowl - home of Southern Brave - bounced back from a slow start.

Their first men's game drew a crowd of 8,452 compared to 12,549 for the equivalent fixture in 2025, although the caveat for this year's match could be that it was on the last day of the school term.

Cardiff's Sophia Gardens, the smallest of the host grounds, enjoyed record crowds for both its men's and women's Fire teams, drawing 11,796 fans for their fixture against MI London.

Timings play their part when looking at individual games, too - for example, Cardiff had two midweek 11:30 BST starts for their women's team, while their record crowd came on a Saturday night.

The two London teams were predictably at the top of the table, including the derby fixture between Spirit and MI London drawing a crowd of 27,721 - a record for any group stage match in the tournament's history.

But without a London team in either the men's or women's Eliminator, The Oval was not close to sellout on Friday, with 10,271 in for the women's and 20,124 for the men's.

Tournament director Vikram Banerjee told BBC Sport he thinks 2026 has been a "better edition" than last year and "one of the best" in The Hundred's history.

"The quality now is second only to the IPL, by a clear distance in both the men's and women's games," said Banerjee.

"Our broadcast numbers are looking good, our online audiences are generating great numbers, and we're growing. We're doing great stuff, so I think it has been our best year."

Banerjee added the crowd figures are just "one measure" and instead pointed to building "fandom" and "engagement" numbers, where the tournament was the most viewed season across The Hundred's own social media channels.

The sales of the teams has also meant the new owners have become responsible for their own marketing and ticket prices and sales, when previously everything was run centrally by the ECB.

Ticket prices have risen at some grounds, including highs of £55 for some adult tickets at The Oval, which covered both the women's and men's games that day.

But the prices were much lower elsewhere, between £20 and £30 for advance tickets at most grounds, while the ECB still set the £5 price for junior tickets everywhere.

The ECB's chief executive Richard Gould suggested the new ownership would eventually improve fans' allegiances to the teams despite the overhaul, but accepted that attendances need to improve.

"It'll take time because there are new brands, but there's a lot more attachment that fans can now have with the teams because they're owned by the clubs and the investors, rather than all being owned centrally by the ECB," Gould told BBC Sport.

"We would like to see even more people coming to the grounds as attendances were more or less flat. It was a slower start and then built towards the end.

"The weather's been perfect, but the economy's not that great.

"When you look at the changes we've seen in terms of branding and team names, there was always going to be a bit of a reset moment. But I've got absolute confidence that we're in a really strong position."