South African News You Can Trust.
The South African government’s nearly R1billion plan to sponsor football giant Tottenham Hotspur is only for space on the team jersey’s shirt-sleeve.
This is among the new details emerging out of the UK press coverage of the local furore over the proposed deal that would see South African Tourism fork out R910 997 814.75 over 36 months.
Details of the proposal which was first exposed by a report in the Daily Maverick based on a PowerPoint presentation by South African Tourism said the country’s money would see it get value from kit branding, interview backdrop branding, match-day advertising and partnership announcements.
Where exactly South Africa Tourism would feature on the Tottenham jersey was unclear until today.
According to the UK Times, the three-year sponsorship deal is only for the shirt-sleeve – similar to what Visit Rwanda has on the Arsenal jersey.
Although Arsenal are former premier league winners – Tottenham is yet to win the premier league in the modern era. Visit Rwanda pays 10 million pounds (R211 million) a year to advertise on Arsenal’s sleeve, according to the Atlantic.
The comparison between the two shirt sleeve deals is sure to get more tongues wagging in South Africa, where there has been intense backlash over the proposed deal in light of the country’s energy crisis.
Political parties across the divide have joined the criticism.
The DA’s tourism spokesperson Manny de Freitas said in a statement: “Our country is in a power crisis. Consumers are being crushed by inflation. There is no way the ANC will be able to condone such a decision in the 2024 election, not even among its staunchest supporters.”
He called the plan “a slap in the face of every South African whose hard-earned tax will be used to sponsor a first-world football team, and an insult for the South African tourism and travel sector which was decimated, and in many cases completely destroyed, during and post Covid-19.”
De Freitas said he would submit questions as to how the decision was arrived at and what studies were undertaken to justify it. He said the DA would also be tabling it at the next tourism portfolio committee meeting.
GOOD Party MP Brett Herron told the Argus: “Providing a stable electricity supply, and managing sewerage in the country’s premier tourist cities, Cape Town and Durban, to stop the forced closure of beaches, would do more to market South Africa than paying a small fortune to print the national flag on the football shirts of Tottenham Hotspur.”
Herron said that while developing the tourism sector was important to the economy, there were too many other urgent priorities to warrant the proposed sponsorship deal and that it should be “shot down” on the same basis as that of the department of arts and culture plan to fund a hugely expensive giant flag: “Unaffordable and preposterous.”
According to the Argus, ActionSA president Herman Mashaba added: “At a time when South Africa is facing an unprecedented energy crisis and rampant crime, scarce state resources should be used to address the most pressing needs in the nation.”
He said South African sports teams and athletes continued to have to beg for money and seek sponsorships when they aimed to represent the country overseas.
Source IOL
