SPAR named gsport4girls Awards’ 2024 Sponsor of the Year
SPAR has been heavily involved in the development of women's sport for decades.
Supermarket giant SPAR scooped the Sponsor of the Year Award at the prestigious gsport4girls Awards at the Wanderers Club on Thursday, September 12.
SPAR has sponsored women’s sports for the past 34 years. Its two main sponsorships are the SPAR Women’s 10km Challenge, including the SPAR Grand Prix, and South Africa’s premier women’s sport, netball.
Over the past three decades, SPAR has also sponsored women’s tennis, women’s lawn bowls and women’s hockey – outdoor and indoor. For 12 years, SPAR was the title sponsor of the national women’s hockey team and is currently title sponsors of the women’s indoor hockey team.
SPAR sponsored the gsport Awards for a number of years and was the co-sponsor, with Telkom, of the World Netball Championships in Cape Town last year. SPAR initially became involved in women’s sports through the SPAR 10km Challenge, which encourages women of all ages and from all walks of life to get involved in road running.
The Challenge started in 1990 and grew from one race a year in Durban to include races in Cape Town, Gqeberha, Durban, Tshwane, Pietermaritzburg, Mbombela and Johannesburg. It is the biggest women-only road running series in the world.
Seventeen years ago, the SPAR Women’s Challenge was expanded to include the SPAR Grand Prix, which gives advanced and elite athletes in all age groups the opportunity to compete for points and prize money over five races each year. With prize money of more than R2m, it is the richest women-only road running series in Africa.
The headline sponsorship of the SPAR Netball Proteas is the longest naming rights sponsorship of a national team in South Africa. The 25-year sponsorship has just been extended to the next Netball World Cup in 2027. SPAR also sponsors the national netball championships.
SPAR’s national PR, communications and sponsorship manager, Mpudi Maubane, said SPAR was humbled by the award. “SPAR is very honoured to have won this prestigious award. We are thankful to each person who took their time to vote for SPAR, it’s a huge recognition.”
