Big Bash privatisation: a record profit, a forecast loss, and four teams on the table

Melbourne. The annual general meeting ended and the loudest story was not who took the chair. It was that Mike Baird's departure had been announced a month in advance — not a resignation, a negotiated exit. Baird had been New South Wales' nominee since 2026 and chair since 2026. The issue that cost him the seat was his position on Big Bash privatisation, and the body that pulled it was his own state association. David Boon was named interim chair. Within the same week came the line that Tasmania and Western Australia are poised to vote.

Two things are happening at once — the chair is changing and the asset is being sold. Reading them separately leaves the picture incomplete.

Cricket Australia posted an A$81.8m group net profit for 2026-26, after two loss-making years. The number was built on a home Ashes and the ODI and T20I series against India. Over the same period, Tests at Perth and Melbourne that finished inside two days cost the board roughly A$20m in revenue. Chief executive Todd Greenberg has said on record that the next two years carry significant losses tied to a cyclical decline in media revenue.

Four states sit at four different points. Cricket Victoria is furthest along: it has applied to sell 100% of the Melbourne Renegades, 49% of the Melbourne Stars, and has trademarked three names — Rangers, Magic, Blazers. Its sale process is live. Cricket Tasmania's chief executive says he is very keen to test the market but wants only a 49% minority in the Hobart Hurricanes. WA Cricket's chief executive has previously flagged interest in testing the market for the Perth Scorchers and is publicly the least committed. Cricket NSW has strongly opposed the self-determination model.

Australian cricket is converting member-owned T20 franchises into partly private ones at the precise moment its chief executive is publicly forecasting losses. That makes this a transfer of risk rather than an injection of growth capital. Proceeds will function as a buffer against a media-revenue downswing, and buyers will anchor to the loss forecast, not the A$81.8m headline. That gap is the weakest joint in the transaction.

The Renegades 100% sale is the solid part, because it is the first real price discovery. The Stars' 49%, the Hurricanes' 49%, any Scorchers stake — all of it gets priced off that one clearing number. The auction taught me that a gut feeling can lose a bidding war and still be right; the mirror question here is that until the bidding happens, calling any of these assets cheap or dear is guesswork. The source report discloses no valuation for any club.

The least-discussed element is the bundling. New ownership is expected in place for the 2027-28 WBBL and BBL seasons, which means private capital arriving through the men's team acquires influence over the women's programme's funding and scheduling. No funding protection for the WBBL appears in the disclosed material. For a growing product, that is not a small exposure.

The self-determination model carries an internal mismatch. CA is letting each state decide whether and how much to sell — decentralising the sale — while keeping broadcast negotiation centralised. Sell the product in pieces and price it as one, and the buyer will always have grounds to argue the product is not coherent.

The binding constraint is not market demand but internal federation politics. Cricket Victoria trademarked three names at once, then paused after interstate pushback. One state holding a veto over another state's commercial IP is the tightest ceiling on Big Bash growth. The source report does not name the Stars at all — it calls them Victoria's second team. In Moscow I mispronounced Mbappé and heard the distance between knowing and belonging; dropping a name signals the same thing. The identity is not yet final.

Underneath it all sits concentration risk. The profit line was created by the Ashes and by India bilateral content, and CA does not control the frequency of either.

The headline says two more states are poised to vote. Three states at three stages are being presented as one wave, and that is the main framing flaw. Years of watching Australian domestic cricket from India taught me that the gap between an announcement and a process is where headlines usually go wrong. Greenberg himself refuses to be definitive: I can't be definitive on which teams, because ultimately, it's a decision for those states and their clubs. That quote and that headline sit in the same report.

Beneath it is a conflict nobody mentions. State associations are simultaneously the sellers of the licences, the nominators of Cricket Australia board directors, and the beneficiaries of the board's distributions. Ed Cowan's case opens the structure: an 18-Test player who joined the Cricket NSW board in 2026 and now sits as a CA director. He resigned from the NSW board as governance requires, but no cooling-off period is disclosed. No public evidence of independent valuation or director recusal appears anywhere.

And above all of it, the decision will be taken under an interim chair. I have learned to trust the pause before the call, not just the call — the six-to-eight week voting window is that pause, and the man sitting in it does not have a confirmed mandate.

Three things to watch: formal resolutions from Tasmania and WA within six to eight weeks, the Renegades clearing price, and the 2027-28 target. WA's position decides whether this becomes a national programme or a Victorian experiment. The vote itself is a Super Over — it will tell you who won, and nothing at all about the teams.