Can anything be done to overcome the corruption and mismanagement that bedevils South African sports administration? Business schools think so — which is why some want to tackle the issues in their MBA programmes.
In some of the country’s sporting codes — including athletics, football, boxing, swimming, cricket, rugby and even netball — administrators often hog the headlines as much as the sports people they are supposed to serve. Corporate sponsors, with millions of rand to spend, would sometimes rather run for cover than be tainted by association.
It’s not just at national level. In recent months, the Comrades and Two Oceans marathons have also been riven by infighting and claims of incompetence.
Some might argue that in a country where corruption is rife and accountability lacking, sport will inevitably face the same problems. So how does South Africa ensure leaders are committed to sports development and not to self-enrichment?
Corruption and bad governance are rooted in the financial incentives and self-governing nature of sports organisations. Many operate autonomously with opaque financial practices and concentrated power, allowing misconduct to go unchecked for years.
To some, the solution lies in MBAs that focus specifically on sports management and administration. These are available overseas but not in South Africa. The hope is that formal business education may help to train local sports administrators to embrace ethics, honesty, accountability and sound financial practices.
Jaco Dames, GM of the Blue Bulls Rugby Union, says specialist sports management MBAs abroad are producing “world-class leaders”.
He says: “South Africa, with its strong sporting culture and growing professional landscape, would benefit enormously from a home-grown MBA in sports management and administration that combines academic rigour with practical local case studies.”
Not everyone agrees. Seraj Toefy, convener of Milpark Business School’s MBA programme, says: “We can put on great sporting events but I don't know if there’s a big enough market for a purely sports-focused MBA. Our MBA is themed around leadership. A lot of the things that you learn in our MBA can be applied in the sports industry.”
Stellenbosch Business School MBA head Tasneem Motala agrees. “Though South Africa has a rich sports culture, the commercial side remains relatively small and underdeveloped when compared with markets such as the US or Europe,” she says.
While some clubs are privately owned in South Africa, leagues are governed primarily by national federations such as the South African Football Association (Safa), Cricket South Africa (CSA) and SA Rugby.
Major sports leagues in the US, such as the National Football League and National Basketball Association operate under private commercial franchise models. They function as profit-driven businesses, with centralised governance and private ownership.
“Without a large number of professional franchises or a thriving sports investment ecosystem, there is less demand for graduates with an MBA in sports management in South Africa,” Motala says. “There is no clear or consistent career pathway for holders of a specialised sports MBA, making it a less attractive qualification for prospective students who are concerned about employability and return on investment.”
Tony Simpson, partner and global head of sport at consulting firm Oliver Wyman, says: “If you’re looking at Africa, there are only three sports: soccer, soccer and soccer.”
Africa should be a behemoth in the global football world. With an audience running into hundreds of millions, soccer is easily the most watched and followed sport on the continent. However, poor governance stops it being the money-spinner that it has become elsewhere in the world.
Oliver Wyman data estimates the total sports market in Africa to be worth more than $12bn annually. The figure is projected to exceed $20bn by 2035, a large portion of it driven by soccer.
Proof of poor governance is that Africa’s greatest players are playing for clubs on other continents, says Simpson. “It’s not because they don’t want to play in Africa. It’s because there isn’t the governance structure in place that allows investments to pick up young boys and girls at 12 or 13 years old, put them through academies and put them into a league and a system that will enable them to have a professional and well-paid existence.”
South African billionaire Patrice Motsepe, president of the Confederation of African Football, has said it made a profit of more than $80m from the 2023 Africa Cup of Nations.
However, African football accounts for less than 5% of the world’s media rights value. Simpson says: “If you don’t have good governance, you don’t get money. Therefore, the private equity and all the big money for football is going into European and North American leagues because there is a governance structure that allows people to realise their investment.”
He adds: “The minute we have a structure in place that allows African sports to build on their biggest asset, which is the people, the raw talent which everybody is after, we’re in a much better place.”
Some South African sports have tried to plug business knowledge gaps through partnerships with universities. There are diplomas, degrees and short courses in sport and recreation management at institutions including the Tshwane University of Technology, University of Pretoria (UP) and University of Johannesburg.
Even then, there are “very few structured postgraduate pathways that focus specifically on governance, ethics and financial compliance in sport”, says Dames.
Among those trying to instil these is SuperSport, Africa’s largest sports broadcaster. SuperSport and parent company MultiChoice have sought to professionalise sport in the country by helping to ensure better-run leagues and teams.
In 2006, the broadcaster, in association with Wits Business School and sports federations, introduced executive management programmes for senior sports administrators, covering governance, leadership, financial management and marketing.
More than 200 administrators completed these courses in eight years. The programme was extended to Nigeria and Kenya.
In 2021, SuperSport partnered with UP’s Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs) and the University of San Francisco in the US, creating the SuperSport Industry Leaders programme. “This gave participants the exclusive opportunity to advance their business and commercial acumen in a highly competitive global sports industry,” says SuperSport.
The programme was offered again in 2024, in association with Gibs and the UK’s Loughborough University.
Gibs dean Morris Mthombeni and his team are using it as a testing ground for a fully fledged sports MBA. “It’s OK to come up with a new product, but you must know you’ve got something compelling to offer,” he says. He adds that Gibs is also working with Spanish football’s La Liga Business School for courses around sports marketing.
Poor governance in South African sport has been around for decades but no-one seems inclined to tackle it head-on. For example, between 2019 and 2021, CSA experienced a major governance crisis under the leadership of CEO Thabang Moroe. A forensic report revealed significant financial irregularities which resulted in Moroe’s suspension and eventual dismissal. The entire board of directors resigned in late 2020.
Gerald Majola, another former CEO, was suspended and later fired after a government inquiry found he had failed to declare unauthorised bonuses from the 2009 Indian Premier League and Champions Trophy tournaments.
In football, the story is no different. US prosecutors accused South African officials of paying a $10m bribe to secure the 2010 Fifa World Cup. In 2024, long-serving Safa president Danny Jordaan was arrested on fraud and theft charges, accused of using Safa funds for personal benefit. The theft charges were later withdrawn but the fraud ones remain.
South Africa is not unique. A US department of justice investigation led to the indictment of top officials at football’s world governing body, Fifa, on charges of fraud, money-laundering and racketeering conspiracy. Europe’s governing body, Uefa, has faced leadership scandals of its own. So have national football federations around the world.
The Lance Armstrong doping scandal highlighted a systemic failure of governance not just within cycling but across sport as a whole. The fallback option in many global sporting bodies, when scandal strikes, is to close their eyes and hope the problem goes away.
Introducing sports administration MBAs into South Africa is not straightforward. Local policy requires business schools to offer general MBAs but allows them to offer an element of specialisation through the choice of elective courses.
Academics such as Joseph Musandiwa, MBA programme manager at the University of Limpopo’s Turfloop Graduate School of Leadership, see a shift towards specialisation. Turfloop itself is considering sports management as an option.
Durban University of Technology Business School plans to include sport in tits programme from 2026. Director Pfano Mashau says: “In our MBA, we do all the administration modules of how to run a business but we have one module that will specifically focus on sports management.”
The option will be available to second-year MBA students. The school plans to attract students from national sporting bodies and from the department of sport, arts & culture.
Dames says the skills required of a modern sports administrator “extend far beyond passion for the game”. They include core management education in finance, human resources, operations and marketing.
There also needs to be specialist management training in governance, event logistics, sponsorship, player welfare and digital media. Then there’s leadership development, with a strong emphasis on ethics and accountability.
Deloitte’s 2025 sports sector outlook highlights the need for modern sports organisations to invest in analytics and create extensive databases with fan information, to increase sponsorship values. Major brands require verifiable audience data, viewership metrics and return on investment estimates to justify investment.
Mthombeni says: “People who understand data and use data-driven decisions make enormous profits in other industries.”
He adds: “Consider the large sports merchandising market. Think about the amount of data that sports events generate, which is then useful for other sectors such as retail. The sports community doesn’t capture that value. If we could have more people who are more informed about these issues, they would be better at capturing some of that value.”
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