Another stand-off between Safa and the PSL over the OUTsurance deal
JOBURG -– Safa and PSL are feuding again, this time over the sponsorship of Safa referees by OUTsurance.
The Premier Soccer League (PSL) and the South African Football Association (Safa) are at each other’s throats once again.
This time they are feuding over a lucrative sponsorship deal Safa recently signed with OUTsurance.
The deal to sponsor Safa’s match referees with a whopping R50 million over five years has apparently sparked another war of words between the two most powerful football bodies in the country. Technically, Safa is the controlling body of soccer in the country.
Safa clinched the deal soon after the insurance company failed to conclude the deal with the PSL. The league felt there would be a conflict of interest because two of its current sponsors, Absa and Nedbank are also in the insurance industry.
When news of the OUTsurance deal with Safa surfaced, the premier league cried foul, saying the sponsorship which includes the referees being kitted out in the company’s logo for premier league matches would conflict with the league’s sponsors.
Safa, which assigns referees to all matches, responded by saying it was they who were in charge of football and not the premier league and nothing would scupper the deal.
After the PSL’s National Soccer League (NSL) board of governors meeting in Kempton Park on 20 September, which is the body that controls professional football in the country, a decision was taken to possibly test the implications of the sponsorship agreement in a court of law.
“The board of governors discussed the implications of the sponsorship agreement entered into between Safa and OUTsurance and the NSL took the view that the sponsorship infringed on the rights of NSL sponsors,” said the chairperson of the PSL, Dr Irvin ‘Iron Duke’ Khoza.
“The board of governors mandated the executive committee to seek legal advice on the matter and to take all steps as may be necessary to resolve the matter.”
The latest stand-off comes hot on the heels of another in which Safa president Dr Danny Jordaan had accused Khoza of allegedly setting Jordaan up with a woman who later accused the Safa president of sexual molestation just before the latest Safa elections which Jordaan won.
The feud between Jordaan and Khoza dates back to the days of the two’s involvement in the Local Organising Committee of the 2010 Fifa World Cup South Africa and the previous elections of Safa which was won by Jordaan after Khoza was barred from standing on a Safa and Fifa technicality.
