ETPL vs The Hundred: How Europe's New T20 League Compares
BY GLASGOW COSMIC EDITORIAL
ETPL vs The Hundred: format, teams, geography and star power. How the European T20 Premier League compares to England's 100-ball competition.
Two leagues, two formats, two very different theories of how to grow cricket in Europe. Here's how the European T20 Premier League and The Hundred actually compare, without the marketing gloss from either side.
The format
The Hundred invented its own format: 100 balls per side, delivered in blocks of five. The ETPL plays T20, the most-watched cricket format on the planet, twenty overs per side, the same rules used by the IPL, the Big Bash and every major franchise league. If you learn cricket watching the ETPL, you've learned the format the rest of the world plays.
The geography
The Hundred is an England-and-Wales competition, eight teams built around English Test grounds. The ETPL is the first franchise league spanning three national boards, Cricket Scotland, Cricket Ireland and the Royal Dutch Cricket Association, with six founding franchises: Glasgow Cosmic, Edinburgh Castle Rockers, Belfast Wolves, Dublin Guardians, Amsterdam Flames and Rotterdam Dockers. It's a bet that professional cricket can live in cities that have never had it.
The ownership model
The Hundred's teams were created and owned by the ECB, with stakes now sold to investors. The ETPL runs a player-owner model that has no real equivalent anywhere in cricket: Matthew Hayden co-owns and coaches Glasgow Cosmic, Glenn Maxwell co-owns Belfast Wolves, Faf du Plessis captains and co-owns Rotterdam Dockers, and Rahul Dravid co-owns Dublin Guardians. The people fronting the league have their own money in it.
The star power
The Hundred, backed by ECB contracts, pulls from England's centrally contracted elite plus overseas draft picks. The ETPL's opening season answers with Steve Smith and Mitchell Marsh at Amsterdam, du Plessis, Heinrich Klaasen and Anrich Nortje at Rotterdam, Ravichandran Ashwin captaining Dublin, and Liam Livingstone, Keshav Maharaj and Lungi Ngidi at Glasgow Cosmic. Established internationals, many with something to prove.
The honest comparison
The Hundred has five seasons of broadcast deals, sold-out finals and proven attendance. The ETPL has none of that yet, it launches 26 August 2026 with three venues and a broadcast picture still forming. What it has instead is the format the world actually plays, three untapped cricket nations, and an ownership model that makes its stars stakeholders. One league is an established product; the other is the more interesting bet.