Speaker Mark Arthur, CEO Yorkshire County Cricket Club

Mark started off by giving us a quick run down on his CV: -

He started off playing cricket at school and up to the age of 25 played at amateur level for Surrey. He worked in the family newsagent business before going to Haymarket Publishing. In 1992 at the age of 32 he was told there was a job going as number 2 on the commercial team at Lords. During his second interview for the job Micky Stewart walked in - Micky had been Mark's coach at Surrey so that made for a more comfortable interview. He spent three and a half years at ECB and was involved with the introduction of coloured clothing in 1993. They couldn't find a source for coloured pads so they painted some but on the first ball the pads were hit and a great blob of paint fell off - they had to go back to the drawing board. In 1994 he joined Notts County Cricket Club as CEO and was responsible for getting a Lottery grant which enabled them to refurbish the ground including building the Radcliffe Road stand. In 1997 he became CEO of Nottingham Forest Football Club which got him involved in the administration side of soccer at the highest kevels including chairing the Footballing Trust and being England's representative at UEFA for social responsibility. Unfortunately, the club chairman who had been financing the club died suddenly and the club was sold to new Kuwaiti owners. Mark did not see eye to eye with the new owners and his employment was terminated quite suddenly in early 2013. However, the day after getting fired he got a telephone call to ask him to interview for the job of CEO at YCCC.

Mark said that Yorkshire is unique in the UK in that it contains 770 local cricket clubs (12% of all those in the UK) and half of those are in West Yorkshire. At the time he joined Yorkshire were losing £1.4 million on a turnover of £6.7 million per year and in danger of losing their Test Match status. Mark went out to the 770 clubs with the message that they needed to attend just one day of County cricket per year to help boost numbers and save YCCC. He managed to get attendance up 43% to a £9.7 million turnover.

In terms of international cricket (which has been played at Headingly since 1899) there was tremendous pressure from the ECB to upgrade the ground. He was able to come up with a deal with Paul Caddick the owner of Leeds Rhino's rugby team who also play at Headingley that a new stand be built at the rugby end of the ground. The financing for this coming from a £42 million loan from Legal & General guaranteed by Leeds City Council. The new stand (sponsored by Dr Keith Howard's company Emerald) will incorporate a banqueting suite with a capacity for 450 people. This will be available on around 250 days per year for functions other than cricket. In addition YCCC will get half the profits from catering whereas in the past they have all gone to the rugby club. Based on all of this Mark is forecasting a turnover of £19 million in 2019 thanks to the help of Paul Caddick, Keith Howard and Judith Blake the leader of Leeds City Council.

Mark said that over the next few years there will be a lot more money coming into the game from TV deals (£110 million) and he is keen to see a lot of this going into the grass roots game around the country as without those local clubs there will not be the pipeline of players to feed the County and National games. To that end he is keen to see Park Avenue refurbished and brought back to a condition where it could be used for at least one day per year for a 50 over game by YCCC as well as having good facilities for the women's teams and disabled teams to play there. With the support of ECB and Sports England there are already 8 new non-turf nets there, new changing facilities and an upgraded square. He now wants to finish the job by building a new pavilion which would include facilities for disabled and women players.

At the end of his talk Mark mentioned that a lot of charity work was done by the Yorkshire Foundation Trust with enormous help from the Emerald Trust but said that there was a whole new talk there and suggested that we should try to get Will Saville to tell us more.