Race, Money and Sports: Part 2

Black athletes in America talk about the realities of sports millionaires #OffTopicButCool

Part 2 of our blog post from yesterday…

Rugby

Rugby players on the other hand earn sustainably less than our local soccer players, a provincial rugby player is looking at around a “mere” R500 000 annually, with unions signing these players for up to three years at the most (according to a Money web article titled the business of sport). Springboks earn an additional income, the Bok contracts are in five categories ranging from R300, 000 to R500, 000 per year. Players that are invited to training camps will receive up to R380, 000 per year. Match fees and bonuses are around R80, 000 per test. Since rugby is a mainly white dominated sport I’d say our black athletes aren’t doing so badly thus far.

 

Anybody would smile in Kallis’s position

Cricket

According to an article published in “This is money: How much do top cricketers earn”, South African cricketers earn around £105,000 (R1 470 000) a year. Those picked to play in the glitzy Indian Premier League can also substantially boost their earnings, according to Top end sport Jacques Kallis (South Africa) made $982,000 (R7 856 000) playing for Bangalore.

Athletics

Now if we contrast this to the rewards offered by the South African Sports Confederation and Olympic Committee (Sascoc) for our athletes if they bring back a gold medal (R400 000), a silver (R200 000) or bronze (R80 000) it is clear to see where the money lies.

Conclusion

All the big money seems to be going towards the big three sports and there just isn’t enough information to suggest that black players earn more or less than their white counter parts. What I can conclude affirmatively is firstly, sport is still male dominated financial as female athletes or sportswomen in South Africa do not actually have any options, unless you excel in a specific discipline and rank among the best in the world. Or have a world record under your belt, like Kirsty Coventry for swimming who is represented by Prosport International – South Africa’s largest sports agency. Spectator interest in South Africa lays predominantly with the abovementioned three sporting disciplines.

Rands or Dollars, we need to spread the sports money fairly

Secondly Endorsement deals are however still not as lucrative here as elsewhere. MaKaab said that about 10% of South Africa’s athletes get 90% of all the endorsement opportunities. “In South Africa the top sportsmen earn a lot more from actual playing contracts than from endorsements. In Europe and the States it is the other way around,” he said. There are still not enough top South African athletes with lucrative sponsorship deals. Whether this is caused by athletes not marketing themselves well enough or are we as the South African public not interested in seeing Benni McCarthy holding a can of coke I’m not sure. Finally I think the youth league got this one wrong (again); there just isn’t enough information to back these claims. Oscar seems to be the exception rather than the rule earning around 1.3 million pounds (18.2 million Rand per year) from endorsement deals according to the U.K’s daily mail. There only reason we know how much Oscar is earning, is because he started shooting people through toilet doors. Perhaps if all our athletes did this Khusela Sangoni- Khawe would have enough information to back her claims.

Thats our piece and tell them you heard it from Matt “The Rat” Mkhize and @Mr_MediaX!

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