Why Yorkshire County Cricket Club must remain a member-led mutual - Michael Stephenson

Every August 1 we in Yorkshire celebrate our cherished institutions but sometimes we take for granted some of our most valuable and under-appreciated assets. Those assets are uniquely and distinctly owned by us and they are unmistakenly part of Yorkshire life. I’m talking about our mutual and co-operative organisations.

But on Yorkshire Day, we need to be aware that we are in danger of losing one of our most famous and historic mutual organisations – Yorkshire County Cricket Club.

At a time when many are calling for Yorkshire Water to be converted to a mutual, owned and run by its customers, rather than a private company loaded down with huge debt and beholden to shareholders more interested in profit than service, Yorkshire CCC seem determined to go in the other direction.

As a mutual, Yorkshire has been the most successful county club in the country. It has been owned and run by its members since it was founded in 1863 but the club has made a disastrous decision.

They have come to the very hasty conclusion that the only way to bring in new investment and ensure test cricket at Headingley in the future is to de-mutualise early in 2027 and sell the club to a private company, most probably one based outside the UK.

The club has set up a working group to apparently look at investment options for the future but they already stated before the process began that they would de-mutualise regardless of what the findings of that group may be.

They even named it the ‘Demutualisation Consultation Group’, a recklessly self-fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one.

All Yorkshire members want to see new investment coming into the club but for no good reason they have put the cart before the horse in a headlong race to abruptly end the historical status of Yorkshire as a club owned and controlled by its members.

This is despite the fact that the club is in good shape financially and according to the chair, they are yet to have a meaningful conversation with a single potential investor.

The plan to sell out to a private company would take away the voting rights currently enjoyed by the club’s members with a vague promise of some sort of shareholding in the new company without any detail of what that company would be, who would be running it, where would it be based and what that shareholding would look like.

And there is no guarantee that the new company would not simply sell on to another private company who would have absolutely no legal or moral responsibility to give Yorkshire members any shareholding and any say in how the club is run.

There is not even any guarantee that having downgraded Yorkshire from a club to a plc, the investment would ensure test cricket at Headingley so there is a very real possibility that the club would give up everything and achieve absolutely nothing.

Yorkshire would no longer be Yorkshire. They would be a soulless corporate entity like Manchester United or Chelsea.

That comparison really gives a sharp focus to the stark difference between the present and the future for Yorkshire. It’s the difference between the authentic experience of being a cricket club member and being a supporter of a football team.

For more years than I care to remember, I have been both a member of Yorkshire County Cricket Club and a season ticket holder at Leeds United.

Every year, I get very excited about the arrival of my Yorkshire membership pack and my Leeds United season ticket. But that is where the similarity between the two ends.

Being a member of Yorkshire gives me a sense of belonging to something meaningful, something historic and something valuable beyond simply monetary considerations.

My trips to Headingley, York and ‘Scarbados’ every season are filled with the joy of socialising with my mates who are also members.

We have all joined as members, not customers. Our share in the club is not just through that membership pack, it’s through our heart and soul.

In contrast, my Leeds United season ticket gives me nothing more than the use of a single seat in a stadium for 19 matches a season.

I love my football team but the club has an essentially commercial relationship with me. I have no ownership rights and I have no say in what happens in the boardroom at Elland Road.

If Yorkshire CCC intend to go the way of our football teams we will have lost one of our great Yorkshire mutuals. And it will be lost forever because once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

So let’s hope this is not the last Yorkshire Day when the club’s future is decided by passionate and loyal Yorkshire members rather than in a boardroom thousands of miles away in New York or Delhi.

Michael Stephenson is a member of Yorkshire County Cricket Club.