Chelsea co-owner Todd Boehly has acquired a 49 per cent stake in the Trent Rockets Hundred franchise. Boehly, along with Chelsea director Jonathan Goldstein, has purchased the stake in the Nottingham-based team, which represents the counties of Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire and Leicestershire, via their real estate investment vehicle Cain International.

Cain have paid just under £40million for the stake in the team, valued at around £79million, with Boehly and Goldstein having been stymied in their attempts to purchase a stake in the London Spirit franchise during the Hundred auction. Fellow Chelsea co-owners Clearlake Capital were also reportedly interested in acquiring a stake in one of the teams last month.

Nottinghamshire CCC, hosts of the Rockets at their Trent Bridge ground, will retain control of the other 51 per cent of the team. The investment potential of short-form cricket is something that investors have been keen on for some time, with heavy interest in acquiring stakes in teams in the Indian Premier League in recent years.

READ MORE: Enzo Maresca's Chelsea transfer masterplan could be hijacked as Man Utd sent urgent instruction

READ MORE: Chelsea have already made Caoimhin Kelleher transfer decision as Liverpool star set for move

Some IPL sides took stakes in Hundred franchises, including the Lucknow Super Giants, with its owners, the RPSG Group, taking 49 per cent of the Manchester Originals. Teams had until the end of January to name their two preferred bidders in order of preference, with the process then passed over into the hands of the England & Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and Raine Group, the New York-based merchant bank which handled the full sale of Chelsea to Boehly and Clearlake in 2022, and the purchase of a minority stake in Manchester United at the end of 2023.

The ECB and Raine then assessed the available options and matched teams with part-owners. The most valuable franchise was, unsurprisingly, expected to be the London Spirit, with that team’s stake purchased by a consortium of tech billionaires fronted by Nikesh Arora, the chief executive of Palo Alto Networks.

The value of that 49 per cent stake was £145million, with the total value of the whole franchise worth almost a staggering £300million, demonstrating the value proposition that investors believe that short-form cricket has in the longer term.

When Chelsea's takeover was announced in May, Boehly said: "We are honoured to become the new custodians of Chelsea Football Club. We’re all in – 100% -- every minute of every match. Our vision as owners is clear. "We want to make the fans proud.

"Along with our commitment to developing the youth squad and acquiring the best talent, our plan of action is to invest in the club for the long-term and build on Chelsea’s remarkable history of success. "I personally want to thank ministers and officials in the British government, and the Premier League, for all their work in making this happen."

Then, the following year, he added: "Our view though was that this is a long-term project and we are committed to the long-term. "We very much believe that we are going to figure it out.

"We have got the best league in the world, we have got what I think is the top city in the world and we have got an unbelievable location in the top city in the world. "There is a market for top players in every country in the world and each one of those markets is different."