The Premier Soccer League (PSL) scored big and avoided a disaster during the termination of their partnership with pay channel DStv as their league title sponsors.
Quick-thinking and a proactive approach by the PSL bosses resulted in them ending DStv as title sponsor of the league – turning the dire situation into a win-win situation for the two once cash-flush enterprises, DStv and the PSL.
The duo was caught in a financial conundrum before the start of the new season.
DStv is reported to be in a dire financial situation with its dwindling subscriber numbers and the league needed a title league sponsor, with the new season needing to kick off as early
as possible.
The PSL was getting around R139-R150-million a year from its deal with DStv – but it ended up getting double when it accepted the R300-million that Betway put on the table last week.
For DStv, it was also a win. It was able to skip a year from its financial contractual obligation and go back to its shareholders having saved a cool R150-million plus around R50-million it would normally spend on activations and other marketing gimmicks. About R200-million all in all.
Sensing danger, the league had conducted a business risk analysis and noticed that a high percentage of the revenue, more than 80% in fact, came from a single source, the MultiChoice group in Randburg. And it concluded that putting all its eggs in one basket was a huge business risk.
French broadcasts top dogs, Canal+ had already started gobbling MultiChoice shares piece by piece, and the writing was on the wall.
Betting company Betway came with the offer of R300-million a year over three years (a total of R900-million). And that is where the initiation to sever ties with DStv came
to fruition.
The news had been all over the media that DStv was losing subscribers and had made a R4,1-billion loss in the last financial year.
It was time for the PSL to jump ship or sink with DStv.
Betway had been trying to break into the mainstream football market, since it already had a foothold on rugby and cricket. It had been courting PSL chairman Irvin Khoza to get access into the SA professional football landscape.
Said Khoza on Friday: “When we lost the Absa league sponsorship in 2020, there was no time to get a sponsor because different companies had finalised their budgets. We appealed to MultiChoice, and even the price we asked for, they gave us less. We could not start the league without a sponsor for the premier division,” Khoza said.
“MultiChoice were not supposed to last long because they were overexposed. Their sponsors were overlapping, and it makes sense. It had been a stop-go with Absa, their marketing department had given us green light – there was boardroom politics at Absa during that time. There was also a change of guard at Absa that time.
“Afterwards, they tried to reverse the situation because they could not understand how they could drop a property as powerful as the PSL.
“We appealed to MultiChoice and it was an overlap but to maintain the quintessential status of the league was very important, and for that we are grateful.
“It was a good decision for them and for us, we also understood that with passage of time we would get a replacement,” he said.
“At the 2022 Champions League, Betway guy (Laurence Michel) spoke to me. There were also feelers coming from Hollywoodbets to entice us. In that discussion, the other sponsors were looking for activation on the digital opportunity – that’s what caused the delay.
“We had to finalise the claw-back of the content from SuperSport to finalise our digital strategy as the PSL.
“We know the value of our property – our property cuts across all LSM’s.
“Go to all companies on Mondays, and they will be talking about football and PSL games, whether you are a judge, a professor or a banker. Everybody consumes football,” Khoza
added.
I need Gemini motor gate.