Where Cricket Board Money Goes: From Jersey Sponsors to the Zug Mailbox

I was watching a match in the India-New Zealand series last November. During the break, sponsor logos rotated on screen, and three of those company names I had never heard before. After the match, I wrote down those three names. Two weeks later, when I dug through company registry papers, I found that two of the three had the same registered address. A post box in Zug, Switzerland, number Postfach 1818. I first met that mailbox in 2026 while reading FIFA World Cup hospitality contracts. Fourteen contracts worth $8.6 million kept returning to the same address. Six years later, that address reappeared on a cricket jersey. The mailbox was the first witness, and it never changed its story.

Before discussing the financial structure of cricket boards, one thing needs to be clear. When an ordinary viewer sees a sponsor logo, they assume the money goes directly into the board's account. In reality, major transactions almost never happen in a single step. From series title sponsorship to stadium site branding, match-ball logos, umpire jerseys—every layer has a different company. Many of them work on behalf of yet another company. Liability moves from hand to hand, just as a signature changes hands when a document changes hands.

I have spent the past few months going through 380 pages of financial documents from four cricket boards. I added to that the sponsorship contract index I have maintained since 2026—date, counterparty, amount, jurisdiction. According to the index, between 2026 and 2026, 41 percent of entities involved in international series sponsorship contracts in South Asia and the Caribbean had registered addresses in tax-favorable jurisdictions. Two addresses returned most often—one in Dubai, the other in Zug.

The issue is not actually fraud. The issue is a gap in administration. When a board sells sponsorship, it usually signs with a marketing agency. That agency sub-contracts an event management company. That company hires a local production house. At every layer, 8 to 15 percent commission is deducted. On paper, responsibility stays put—but where the money actually stops changes.

A pattern stood out in the documents. In one contract, a payment of $1.8 million under 'Technical Service Fee' went to a Hong Kong entity. Yet the contract contains no specification of what technical service was purchased for that series. There is only an invoice number and a bank account. I searched by the invoice number and found it referenced in two other contracts under different names. One invoice, three uses.

In cricket board audit documents, such payments are typically classified as 'operational expenses.' The problem is that the definition of operational expense is so broad that almost anything can fit inside it. In the UK, club-level authorities have some rules—every major transaction must declare its counterparty in Companies House filings. But international cricket boards have no such obligation. Financial transparency is a condition for ICC membership, but what specific mechanism applies that condition?

While asking this question, an old case comes to mind. In 2026, during COVID's empty-stadium period, I dug through the accounts of English club Wigan Athletic. In 2026-20, the club paid £6.4 million in 'management fees' to a Hong Kong entity. Weeks later, the club went into administration, 12 points were deducted, 75 jobs were at risk. £6.4 million did not vanish—it was rerouted through people who did not exist.

The same pattern is now forming in cricket, but the signs are subtler. Franchise league broadcast rights, team sponsorships, even player draft agent commissions—the same name keeps returning. Of the four boards whose documents I examined, three had one name with no direct role in any contract, yet present in every contract. An intermediary entity.

My biggest discovery came from metadata. I sorted a contract file by time zone. The company claiming to be London-based had all its documents created in United Arab Emirates time. The company claiming to be Dubai-based had all its documents created in Indian time. The contract text looked impossibly normal—but the metadata was selling out the real location.

Here is a working rule I have: I do not trust a paper trail that ends exactly where it should. If the books look perfect, I ask—how much work did it take to look perfect?

What critics miss here is the question of time. Many think corruption in cricket means match-fixing or betting. But the larger part of financial corruption happens outside the match, across the season, in contract papers, in tax records. Match-fixing gets caught because the ball's trajectory is abnormal. But a $1.8 million 'technical service fee' does not get caught, because on paper it is entirely legal.

The second thing critics avoid—the incentive structure. A board official's promotion depends on increasing series revenue. The easiest path is a sponsorship contract. And the more complex the sponsorship contract, the fewer questions are asked. Complexity, not transparency, is what gets rewarded.

The problem with the India-UK corridor is rarely mentioned. Implementing a contract between two countries requires an international intermediary. Where the two countries' tax systems differ, coordinating liability and money flow is difficult. The difficult work goes to an outside company. If it is unclear which jurisdiction that company operates in, tracking the money becomes nearly impossible.

In my writing I deliberately cite jurisdiction at every step. UK rules and Indian rules are not the same. In London, declaring beneficial ownership is mandatory. In India, foreign direct investment requires separate clearance. If someone treats these two systems as one, the real gap will be missed.

Cricket's problem here is nothing different. Cricket is simply learning more slowly than other industries—losing money and rerouting money are not the same thing. The rerouting method has developed through a notable habit: when an authority outsources its own distribution plan instead of building one, the boundary of responsibility blurs. And when the boundary blurs, identifying where the problem is becomes difficult.

The tactic I noticed most: splitting large contracts into smaller pieces. A $10 million series sponsorship, if awarded at once, needs board meeting approval—so it is split into five or six smaller contracts, each under $2 million. It is the easiest way to avoid committee approval—a $2 million contract does not catch a local committee's eye, but together they become $12 million.

If the operation of moving money on blockchain becomes accessible, a question is growing louder among experts on board governance—why doesn't every board submit complete financial information with its membership application?

In the English Premier League, clubs submit ownership and explanation of their assets to league authorities. If cricket boards adopted that standard, those gaps would be exposed.

But the reality is that exposure collides with incentive. Transparency means fewer places where suspicion can grow. Law visibly credits competence, but actual ledgers show a different story. In Jaguar League sponsorship and broadcast contracts, one pattern is clear—many contracts are signed with dates after completion, some signed after seeing the previous month's score. This happens when a distance is created between administration and financing plans.

When I look at all this, I feel that every clean explanation has a second address, and the second address has a landlord. The real story is not that a problem is created—it is the system that makes the problem normal. And that system is now spread across every layer of cricket.