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The PSL recently launched the Carling Knockout Cup to add to the league’s knockout competitions.
Muzi Ntombela/BackpagePix
SPORT
Turn up at any PSL match, and it is impossible to escape the magic eye of sponsors, whether on the players’ shirts and sleeves, old-fashioned advertisements, multi-faceted merchandise, or electronic images chasing each other around the pitch perimeter.
In a bid to stand out, appeal, raise awareness, and promote association, a number of corporate brands have conveniently turned to the PSL for brand inspiration and recognition.
PSL sponsorship provides a wonderful opportunity to leverage a marketing budget and achieve multiple returns on businesses’ investments.
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Considering business interests, have PSL clubs developed into cash-generating brands? Can they be described as a fully fledged business?
Journalist Simon Kuper and sports economist Stefen Szymanski teamed up to write an engaging book titled “Soccernomics” that is in tune with the current PSL business. They argue:
Soccer is neither big business nor good business. It arguably isn’t even a business at all. The world, it seems, earns more from soccer than the industry itself does.
This extract from the book came to mind when the PSL and SABMiller launched the Carling Black Label Knockout Cup.
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Millions of South Africans are emotionally enslaved to the PSL teams, and that has elevated the league to be the highest marketing platform for sponsors and a fertile ground for the sports broadcasting business.
Do the PSL clubs generate enough money from the games? I doubt.
The fact that the main competition, the DStv Premiership, pays a mere R15 million for the first prize, while the Nedbank Cup pays R7 million and the MTN8 R8 million, is an indication that the PSL clubs’ business is not ‘good business’.
The latest announcement by the Carling Knockout Cup that its first prize will be a meagre R6.8 million confirmed the perception that SA’s business does not take soccer seriously.
The prize monies paid by PSL sponsors are too little when compared with what sponsors benefit from being associated with the nation’s addiction to football.
In fact, the PSL is supposed to be paying at least R50 million to the league champions while each cup competition pays at least R25 million for the first prize
It is even worse that most PSL clubs do not have shirt sponsorships. Currently, PSL clubs that are competing to win cups spend an average of R4.5 million to buy a good player.
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And paying such huge transfer costs for chasing prize monies in single million digits is definitely not good business.
Surely, sponsors seem to be earning more from PSL soccer than the clubs do.
*Thabani Khumalo is a marketing specialist at Think Tank Marketing Services and a former Boxing SA board member
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