Gloucestershire Cricket secures £400k investment to growth

South West place-based impact investor BBRC has invested £400,000 into Gloucestershire County Cricket Club to help it significantly grow its revenue streams and bolster its community impact programmes.

The investment from the BBRC-managed City Funds impact investment fund will allow Gloucestershire to develop three new programmes:

• Gloucestershire’s new educational endeavours, which will pull together partnerships from across the local area to create ‘working world’ educational and employment opportunities for young people who are experiencing barriers to accessing the workplace.
• The Bristol Refugee project. In the last couple of years, Gloucestershire has supported refugees in the city with open cricket sessions at the venue, providing food and space to pray. In 2023, the Club has supported City of Bristol College in the creation of a cricket club enabling the young Afghan refugees at the college to play indoors through the winter. The investment will support Gloucestershire to expand this work with the college, offering students a 25-hour a year programme across the academic year on wider life skills including budgeting, information about living in the UK and healthy eating, alongside the previously trialled cricket practise.
• With the new funding, Gloucestershire will be able to reinstate its partnership with the BIMM music institute, which previously ran in 2021 and 2022, and enables young local up-and-coming artists to play at the venue on matchdays to larger audiences than they would usually.

Jari Moate, investment director at BBRC, said: “Gloucestershire represents another organisation delivering significant social impact in our region, supporting and empowering young people and minority groups.

“As a result of this investment, the club will be able to reinstate previously successful programmes and expand its work to help even more people in the South West.”

These additional programmes will complement an already impressive range of initiatives Gloucestershire provides to deliver social impact. The club currently hosts weekly ‘Walkers and Talkers’ sessions, ran by former player Andy Brassington, as well as initiatives such as ‘walking cricket’ for older people. The Club also hosts two mental health charities on its site and conducts educational visits to local schools providing career guidance for people with barriers to employment through the Restore Trust. 

Neil Priscott, interim CEO at Gloucestershire, said: “We are delighted to receive this investment from BBRC, it’s a powerful demonstration of support for our work, ethos and impact.

“The investment represents a great partnership between a locally embedded sports club and an impact-focused, locally embedded investor. BBRC has helped to provide a strategic commercial transformation, which supports the social impact at the heart of our Club’s business plan.”