ECB’s new tournament hits the ground running

The inaugural season of UK cricket’s newest tournament, The Hundred, drew to a close in August, having gripped the nation. A total of 16.1m TV viewers tuned in across the tournament, including a record-breaking audience of 1.95m who watched the curtain-raising Women’s fixture on July 21. In person attendance across the competition was also the highest for a women’s cricket event globally ever.

We were proud to play a role in proceedings, supporting both KP Snacks and Sure in the activation of their partnerships with The Hundred, whilst we also had twelve clients represented by our Talent team playing in the tournament.

KP Snacks

We began by helping KP Snacks create and launch its campaign, Everyone In. As Official Team Partner of The Hundred, KP Snacks is on a mission to inspire thousands of families across the UK to get active through cricket. The new initiative provided a simple and fun way for everyone to get a taste of cricket, whilst getting active with family and friends. Find out more on that campaign here: https://www.everyonein.co.uk

To support this, we helped deliver a 10-week promotion that gave away 10,000 free cricket bats & balls to Greater Manchester area, which was amplified through an in-store partnership with the Co-op. As well as being responsible for the delivery of all in-stadia and digital branding rights and allocation of matchday tickets we also delivered a series of animated idents which aired on premier broadcaster Sky Sports throughout the tournament. The idents helped bring to life KP Snacks’ core message that cricket is a game for everyone.

Each ident represented a KP Snacks brand and The Hundred team they sponsor, portraying cricket being enjoyed by communities all over the country, with cameos from The Hundred’s biggest stars such as Ben Stokes, Jofra Archer and Heather Knight.

The Hundred - Everyone In logo

Sure

As a brand, Sure have become synonymous with football but this summer, we helped them take a leap into the cricketing world, coming on board as an official partner of The Hundred. With both a Men’s and Women’s tournament running concurrently, the partnership provided the perfect platform for Sure to drive dual-gender product saliency (a first for the brand), whilst also touching upon brand purpose through their #MoveWithSure hashtag. This aligned neatly with a tournament that aims to inspire families and communities to get involved with cricket.

We were responsible for fulfilling a number of partnership rights. Such as, the creation of a TVC and multiple idents that ran during the broadcast on Sky Sports. We were also responsible for the delivery of all in-stadia and digital branding rights, allocation and distribution of matchday tickets and the development of a co-created content series that ran on official Hundred channels during the tournament

Take a look at the Sure “Double Protection Series” content shared on the Offical Hundred Twitter account here.

Athlete Management

On the field, twelve of our clients featured in the tournament across six teams. Jonny Bairstow made a fast start to the tournament, captaining Welsh Fire to two wins and blitzing 128 runs in the process, before being selected for England’s Test squad for the series against India.

The standout performers, though, were Jake Lintott and Paul Stirling of the Southern Brave. Lintott, the left arm wrist spinner, took 11 wickets in 9 games – making him the joint 2nd highest wicket taker in the competition, while Stirling, opening batsman, scored a crucial 61 from 36 balls in the final, including 6 sixes!