Your Daily Dose of Ad World Buzz
Latest
✦BULLET Puts Out A Feature Anime Made Entirely On Its Own AI✦Apple Becomes The First Brand In The Creative Hall Of Fame✦Ricky Ponting Buys Into The Company He Is Fronting✦Are AI Storyboards Changing How Ideas Get Approved?✦Publicis Media Elevates Sneha Redkar To Associate Director✦The First 100 Days In An Advertising Agency✦Benedicct PR Enters The UAE Through DigifyMe✦Redhill India Picks Up Queen's University Belfast✦Rohit Sharma Gets A Family Entertainer On Sony✦Eveready Turns Zepto Deliveries Into Battery Collection✦MARS Cosmetics Takes Its Mascot Out In A Mumbai Cab✦Branquila Picks Up Auric Mills As Pavangati Agro Scales✦BULLET Puts Out A Feature Anime Made Entirely On Its Own AI✦Apple Becomes The First Brand In The Creative Hall Of Fame✦Ricky Ponting Buys Into The Company He Is Fronting✦Are AI Storyboards Changing How Ideas Get Approved?✦Publicis Media Elevates Sneha Redkar To Associate Director✦The First 100 Days In An Advertising Agency✦Benedicct PR Enters The UAE Through DigifyMe✦Redhill India Picks Up Queen's University Belfast✦Rohit Sharma Gets A Family Entertainer On Sony✦Eveready Turns Zepto Deliveries Into Battery Collection✦MARS Cosmetics Takes Its Mascot Out In A Mumbai Cab✦Branquila Picks Up Auric Mills As Pavangati Agro Scales
Brands

Ricky Ponting Buys Into The Company He Is Fronting

Ad Tribe! Bureau2 min read
Ricky Ponting, ambassador investor at Century Cricket, in a white open-collar shirt

Century Cricket has appointed Ricky Ponting AO as initial ambassador investor and lead global advisor for coaching and talent identification, as the cricket technology company begins its North American expansion.

  • First North American flagship centre at Bryant Park in central Manhattan
  • Ponting invests in the company as well as advising it
  • Century Cricket combines technology, data and cricket in membership-based, 24/7 centres
  • Ponting played 168 Tests and 375 ODIs, scoring more than 27,000 international runs
  • Captained Australia to World Cup wins in 2003 and 2007; led the side to 48 wins in 77 Tests

Why Century Cricket Wanted An Investor, Not A Face

Century Cricket says its plan to build a global network of 24/7 membership cricket centres was a key factor in Ponting’s decision to invest.

Chief executive Chris Millard said the commitment goes far beyond an ambassador relationship, and incoming chairman Clayton Glenister pointed to Ponting’s combination of playing credibility and commercial instinct.

Equity changes what an endorsement means. A paid ambassador is renting their name for a period and can decline to renew; someone who has put money in carries the downside of the thing failing. Audiences do not read the contract, but the distinction shows up in how long the association lasts and how much the person will do for it.

What Ponting Actually Advises On

He will advise on coaching and talent identification programmes and contribute to development of the technology platform.

Ponting said Century Cricket will be the future of cricket coaching and talent identification, that the technology is a game changer, and that the Bryant Park facility will be a showcase. The company expects his experience in high-performance leadership and talent development to inform its programmes, game scenarios and technology stack.

New York, Which Is The Bet

The Manhattan centre is positioned as the first step in a wider expansion into major international markets.

Opening in New York rather than a traditional cricket market is a deliberate choice about where the growth is. Cricket in the United States has infrastructure well behind its demand, which makes a membership facility a plausible business there in a way it would not be somewhere the game is already served by clubs.

More on Ad Tribe Brands.

#brand partnerships#Century Cricket#cricket#Ricky Ponting#Sports Sponsorship
Follow Ad Tribe

Advertisement

Ad Tribe Outlook 2026, an independent study of the state of advertising today. Take the survey.