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Eng­lish crick­et has gen­er­at­ed around $650 mil­lion from the sale of stakes in fran­chis­es in The Hun­dred to big-busi­ness in­vestors from In­dia and the Unit­ed States, in­clud­ing con­sor­tiums in­volv­ing NFL great Tom Brady and Los An­ge­les Dodgers part-own­er Todd Boehly.

Auc­tions held over the past two weeks drew bids that val­ue the eight teams in The Hun­dred — a for­mat sim­i­lar to Twen­ty20 and launched in Eng­land on­ly in 2021 — at more than $1.2 bil­lion.

Eng­lish crick­et of­fi­cials con­firmed the huge fig­ures for the first time on Thurs­day and set out how they want the mon­ey spent. The pri­or­i­ty? Safe­guard­ing the fu­ture of the do­mes­tic game that has lurched in­to fi­nan­cial strife in re­cent years.