University gets £1.5m Headingley payment

Yorkshire has sold nine years' advertising rights for perimeter boards at Headingley to cricket's governing body to help ease its financial crisis and pay a large chunk of money owed for building a new 21m pavilion.

Leeds Met had commissioned an independent review of Yorkshire's finances earlier this year after the club was unable to pay it the first instalment of money owed on the building costs.

The university, which uses some of the pavilion for educational purposes, was due a 3m contribution from Yorkshire, which was scheduled to pay 1.5m in four annual instalments and a further 1.5m spread over 20 years in rent. But the cricket club defaulted on the first 375,000 due in September last year and had sought talks over a new schedule of payments, with the university seeking a personal guarantee from chairman Colin Graves.

The sale of its future advertising rights to the England and Wales Cricket Board has now enabled Yorkshire to advance 1.5m up front to Leeds Met, which has confirmed it has received the money to pay off three of the 375,000 instalments and a further 370,000 on fit-out costs. The only outstanding payments remaining are the final 375,000 instalment due in September 2012 plus the rental payments which begin next year.