Big Bash Privatisation: An A$81.8m Profit, and a 'Significant Loss' Warning From the Same AGM

Two sentences, one AGM, and they do not sit in the same room. The first: Cricket Australia posted a group net profit of A$81.8 million for 2026-26, after two consecutive loss-making years. The second: chief executive Todd Greenberg said the board is looking at "significant" losses over the next two years, driven by a cyclical decline in media revenue.

The same meeting advanced the sale of Big Bash League and WBBL franchise licences. Tasmania and Western Australia will vote within six to eight weeks. New ownership is targeted to be in place for the 2027-28 season.

What jars is not that two more states are voting. It is that the sale announcement and the loss warning arrived in the same breath. When a file turns up with three pages missing, the first clue is that the pages are missing.

Context: who is selling what, and in whose name

Cricket Australia is a member-owned federation. The state associations — Victoria, Tasmania, Western Australia, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia — are the members, and they nominate the directors. The eight BBL and eight WBBL teams sit on those associations' books. Under the proposed "self-determination" model, each state decides independently whether, and how much of, its club to sell.

Four associations currently sit at four different points. Cricket Victoria has applied to sell 100 percent of the Melbourne Renegades and 49 percent of the Melbourne Stars, and the sales process is live. Cricket Tasmania's chief executive has said publicly he is "very keen to test the market" — but for a 49 percent minority in the Hobart Hurricanes. Western Australia is "very open to talking", nothing more. Cricket NSW has opposed the self-determination model outright.

The chair changed at the same AGM. Mike Baird, NSW's nominee since 2026 and chair since 2026, left the board after his own state association withdrew support — over his privatisation stance. Former Test opener David Boon is interim chair. Former Test batter Ed Cowan has joined the board, and resigned from the Cricket NSW board as governance rules require.

The financial backdrop comes in two pieces. The profit was built on the home Ashes and the ODI and T20I series against India. The same year, Tests at Perth and Melbourne finishing inside two days cost an estimated A$20 million in revenue.

Core: the second run at the number

I ran the numbers twice, because the first answer was too convenient. The first answer: A$81.8 million in profit, therefore Australian cricket is financially strong and the BBL sale is growth capital. On the second run the denominator changes. That figure is produced by two series whose frequency Cricket Australia does not control. A home Ashes depends on the England tour cycle; a bilateral series against India is the single largest commercial dependency in world cricket. Strip both out and what remains is not A$81.8 million — it is an organisation whose remaining revenue the chief executive himself is forecasting into deficit.

The asset being sold is being sold to offset a hole, not to fund growth. This is risk transfer: the board moves BBL exposure off its balance sheet and takes one-off capital in exchange. Confusing the two is the most likely analytical error in coverage of this story.

The A$20 million price of a two-day Test

This is the least discussed and most valuable fact in the report. Product quality on the field — the pitch, the length of the contest — converts directly into broadcast revenue. A Test finished in two days is not merely lost gate and catering; it destroys three days of advertising inventory that had already been sold. Broadcast agreements typically carry make-good or compensation provisions for exactly this. The A$20 million is realised revenue loss, not an estimate.

In 2026, before the World Cup final at Wanderers, I filed a column arguing that India's top-order dependence was a structural risk, not a moral failing. My editor spiked it as too negative. I kept the file and annotated every prediction. The habit stuck: lead with the number, state the consensus, then show where I disagreed before the result. That is what I am doing here.

Three states, three floors, one headline

The headline says two more states are poised to vote. The body says something else. Victoria has a live process. Tasmania is "keen to test the market". Western Australia is "open to talking". Those are three stages presented as one wave, and Greenberg hedged himself — he could not be definitive on which teams, because the decision belongs to the states and their clubs. The gap between the headline and that quote is the report's main framing distortion.

There are two versions of this story. Only one of them has receipts. This one is published on cricket.com.au, Cricket Australia's own platform. Nothing in it is inaccurate and it is quote-rich, but it is also a governance-communications artefact, and its framing choice — momentum — serves the board's interest in normalising privatisation before state votes. Publishing it immediately after the AGM, with a six-to-eight-week window named, is deadline pressure applied to Tasmania and Western Australia.

One hundred percent of the Renegades, and Melbourne's asymmetry

This is Australian cricket's first genuine price-discovery event. Victoria is selling all of the Renegades, not a token minority. Whatever clears there sets the reference for the Stars at 49 percent, the Hurricanes at 49 percent, and any future Scorchers stake.

The result is an odd configuration: two clubs in the same city, one wholly private, one half inside a member structure, with different capital bases, different investment horizons, and different capacity to spend on overseas talent and support staff. Competitive balance is the unaddressed structural risk of partial privatisation, and no page in this story answers it.

Tasmania's 49 percent preference is the most defensible model for a small market — capital and expertise in, control retained. Western Australia is the swing vote. The Perth Scorchers are the strongest commercial brand in the league; a Scorchers transaction would validate the market far beyond a Hurricanes minority sale. If WA abstains, this stops being a national programme and becomes a Victorian experiment.

The binding constraint is federation politics, not demand

Cricket Victoria trademarked three names — Rangers, Magic, Blazers — for a potential Melbourne identity, then paused after interstate pushback. That is the line nobody formatted. Filing three names at once signals resources already spent. The constraint on BBL commercial growth is internal federal politics: a de facto veto by one state over another's commercial IP.

That is why reading privatisation purely as capital is incomplete. Its real promise is that private ownership could break the veto. Its real risk is that if the veto survives, a Victorian buyer is purchasing an asset it cannot fully commercialise — and any careful bidder will price that in.

The seller nominates the regulator

The clearest structural conflict of interest here is not mentioned in the report at all. State associations are simultaneously sellers of the licences, nominators of Cricket Australia directors, and beneficiaries of board redistributions. Baird's exit shows a large state can remove a sitting national chair on a commercial question — the system working as designed, but also proof that the chair's independence is paper during the negotiation.

And that negotiation sits with an interim chair. Boon is interim, with a full-time decision expected soon. The largest commercial decisions will be taken by a chair without a confirmed mandate. That is an avoidable sequencing error.

Cowan's appointment is formally correct — he resigned from the NSW board as required — but no cooling-off period is disclosed, and he is that state's nominee. Procedural separation, substantive representation.

WBBL is tied into the same bundle

New ownership is expected for the 2027-28 WBBL and BBL seasons — women's licences are being sold inside the same transaction. No document shows separate funding guarantees, scheduling protection or broadcast-exposure commitments for the WBBL. Capital arriving through the men's team acquires influence over the women's programme's budget and calendar. This is the most under-priced item in the file.

Contrarian: where I could be wrong

Let me state the strongest case for the conventional view. Australian T20 assets are globally scarce, the BBL is a proven 14-season product, and private capital brings more than money — it brings scouting, broadcast packaging and brand management that the member-owned structure has not delivered. If the rights market is genuinely cyclical, selling now is not distressed timing but rational timing, because the next cycle's decline is already in the price. A fast-growing WBBL may end up better protected by private capital than by a board absorbing losses — provided the contracts say so.

And if I am wrong, this is how: forecasting losses is prudence, not alarm. The board delivered a record profit after two loss years, and conservative forward guidance is a sign of discipline. My argument is not that the number is wrong. It is that treating it as sustainable earning power is wrong, and buyers will not treat it that way.

What to watch

Western Australia's board resolution. If the Scorchers move toward sale, this becomes a national programme; if they hold, it is Victoria's experiment alone. And above all, the Renegades clearing price. That number will decide whether private capital reads Australian cricket as growth or as a discount. Twenty years on, the same three names — Victoria, Tasmania, NSW — will sit in the same three places, depending on whether the sale proceeds reached the field or the balance sheet.