Bellingham buys 1% stake in Birmingham Phoenix Hundred franchise

Jude Bellingham has bought a 1% stake in Birmingham Phoenix, adding one of football’s biggest young names to a Hundred franchise already reshaped by outside capital and a new private-public ownership mix.

The Real Madrid and England midfielder, who grew up in the West Midlands and began his career at Birmingham City, is now linked to a club based at Edgbaston that represents Warwickshire and Worcestershire in The Hundred. Birmingham Phoenix’s men’s and women’s sides both play at the Birmingham ground, placing Bellingham’s investment squarely inside the city’s wider sporting ecosystem.

The move follows Knighthead Capital Management’s £40 million purchase of a 49% stake in Birmingham Phoenix, with Warwickshire County Cricket Club retaining the remaining 51%. The England and Wales Cricket Board said the first six strategic partner deals across The Hundred were completed in July 2025, and Birmingham Phoenix was among the first franchises to close. The partnership for the club was due to officially begin on October 1, 2025, with operational control shifting after the 2025 Hundred season.

That structure makes Birmingham Phoenix one of the clearest examples yet of how The Hundred’s franchise sales are moving cricket into a more hybrid ownership era. Knighthead, the U.S. investment group that also owns Birmingham City FC, had already tied the franchise more closely to one of the city’s best-known football institutions before Bellingham entered the picture. His stake is small, but symbolically potent: a local player who rose through Birmingham City is now buying into a cricket franchise that sits alongside the club’s broader sports portfolio.

The Hundred launched in 2021, and its franchise sales have increasingly drawn interest from investors looking beyond cricket’s traditional boundaries. Birmingham Phoenix’s 49% sale to Knighthead, now paired with Bellingham’s personal stake, suggests the franchise is being treated not only as a sporting asset but as part of a wider commercial and civic strategy around Birmingham. Warwickshire still holds the majority, but the franchise’s future now appears shaped by a mix of county cricket control, private investment and star-name credibility that reaches well beyond the boundary rope.