Vertu Extends Yorkshire Cricket Relationship As Live Stream Partner
Vertu will extend its long-running relationship with Yorkshire County Cricket Club into the 2025 season, with the award-winning automotive retailer taking up the role of live stream partner for the upcoming campaign.
Vertu, which operates more than 30 dealerships across the county and has over 200 in total, first joined forces with the Club ahead of the 2021 campaign, with the relationship thus far encompassing a hugely successful 2024 season that saw Yorkshire return to the top tier of the County Championship.
As well as a relationship with the Club, Vertu has also worked with the Yorkshire Cricket Foundation to help deliver a number of community-focused projects and provided a minibus that could be used by the Foundation across the region.
The extended partnership comes at an exciting time for Yorkshire County Cricket Club as the men’s team – now being led by former Yorkshire player Anthony McGrath – prepares to return to Division 1, and the women’s team readies for an exciting new professional era in the sport.
That new era will see Yorkshire become a Tier 1 club in the newly-structured women’s game from the 2026 season, with the side playing in Tier 2 during 2025.
The agreement between Vertu and the Club will expand as the company throws its support behind Yorkshire’s popular live stream, which provides fans who are unable to attend games in person with the opportunity to cheer on their team.
Vertu’s support will ensure that the live stream, which covers over 30 matches across all formats of the game for both men and women, remains free-to-view without the need for an additional subscription.
In an extension of Vertu’s community support for the Club, dealerships across Yorkshire will get involved in the Cric-Kit initiative in which people are invited to donate their old kits to be recycled and reused across various community-led projects operated by the Yorkshire Cricket Foundation.
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 to help grow participation in the sport.”
Ben Wickett, Yorkshire County Cricket Club Multimedia Designer, said: “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, Yorkshire County Cricket Club 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.”