The Yorkshire County Cricket Club (YCCC) has developed a partnership extension with the UK-based motor retail brand, Vertu Motors.
Through this deal, the club’s long-running partner will now become the official live stream partner.
Since joining hands in 2021, Vertu’s logo has appeared on the Yorkshire men’s squad’s playing shirts. Moreover, the brand collaborated with the Yorkshire Cricket Foundation to execute various community projects, including the provision of a minivan for the YCF to use throughout the region.
The agreement will also enable the club to produce commentaries for all white ball games for both the Yorkshire men’s and women’s teams ‘in-house’, while Vertu will also provide community support for YCF through the Cric-Kit program. Customers will now be able to donate any unused cricket kit, such as pads and apparel, to be recycled throughout Yorkshire at dealerships throughout the county.
The deal will keep the live broadcast free of charge, allowing fans to watch over 30 live games, featuring the County Championship, Vitality Blast, and Vitality Women’s League 2 competition.
Robert Forrester, Chief Executive of Vertu, said, “We are delighted to extend, and expand, our relationship with Yorkshire County Cricket Club going into the 2025 season. These are exciting times for both the men’s team with the return to Division 1 and for the women’s team with the growth of the professional game, and we are proud that our role as live stream partner will allow fans to follow all of the action during the year ahead. Alongside cheering on the teams on the pitch, we look forward to getting involved in helping the Foundation in its community work in order to help grow participation in the sport.”
Ben Wickett, Yorkshire CCC Multimedia Designer, commented, “We’re incredibly excited to have Vertu on board to help support our live stream offering. Vertu’s partnership will allow us to enhance our live stream even further, enabling us to introduce our own commentary team for white ball games and enhancing our technology to allow us to output a higher quality of stream to our supporters. We know that counties are beginning to look at monetising their streams in a variety of ways. We are passionate at Yorkshire about keeping this as accessible as we can to as many supporters as possible and are delighted that we can continue to offer this for free.”
Tom Webster, YCCC Business Development Manager, said, “Everyone at the Club is delighted to see Vertu extend their partnership with us here at Yorkshire. They have done an incredible amount of work to help cricket flourish in the community and the new partnership will allow us to develop our live stream into a game-leading offering. Vertu are a pleasure to work with and we’re all looking forward to this season and seeing the developments this extended partnership will bring.”