The third season of the thrilling Betway SA20 will be even more spectacular, as league commissioner Graeme Smith revealed the Schools SA20 competition on Monday.
More than 570 schools nationwide — 370 boys’ teams and more than 200 girls’ teams — will participate in the national junior competition.
More than 1 000 matches are scheduled to take place between September 2024 and March 2025.
Speaking to the media at the Betway SA20 launch at Johannesburg’s Wanderers Cricket Stadium, Smith stated that the programme’s goal is to find and develop the next generation of Proteas players.
Equal opportunity for boys and girls
“It’s something I’m excited about because that’s where, like, I guess kids fall in love with sports, you know,” Smith said.
“Being able to create the opportunity across the board for both girls and boys is something we’re excited about.
“For our first season at Schools SA20 to have over a thousand games, 500 schools involved, girls and boys across all the platforms, I think is something we’re excited and scared to get it right, but I think it hopefully will unearth a lot of talent into the future.”
Smith, meanwhile, was unable to contain his enthusiasm for the upcoming Betway SA20 season.
He stated that because there will be more elite players this season, the bar will be set even higher.
“When I look at the teams already, before the auction there are some incredible players, and it’s looking very strong, almost, I would say, like World Cup standard players coming, both locally and internationally. So I’m excited about that,” he said.
Investing in entertainment
“All the feedback we got from fans is, for two years now we’ve had 380 000 fans come through our gates; that’s something we’re excited about.
“We obviously want to grow that, grow the eyeballs, and introduce more people to the event.
“We’ll be investing in entertainment and there’ll be so much happening in our stadiums for people to come and have a great night with us during the summer.
“We want to own summer as SA20. People know that they come into our stadiums to have an incredible time.”
Back-to-back Betway SA20 defending champions Sunrisers Eastern Cape will kick off the new season against MI Cape Town on January 9 in Gqeberha.
