CAPE TOWN - Taxpayers have had to fork out more than ever to continue the operation of the Cape Town Stadium, newly renamed the “DHL Stadium”.
The director of the stadium, Lesley de Reuck, confirmed that during the 2020/21 financial year the City made a contribution of R65 million from grant funding.
Asked to clarify the meaning of “grant funding”, a City spokesperson confirmed “it is rates-funded”.
This is about R10m more than taxpayers had to pay during the previous financial year.
“During the 2019/20 financial year a saving of 16.67% was achieved on the grant funding received from the City with Cape Town Stadium utilising R59.5m grant funding.
“The stadium achieved R17m in income against a budget of R16.6m during the 2019/20 financial year.
“There was a loss of revenue in the amount of R18.5m due to the loss of hosting of events.
“During the 2020/21 financial year the City made a contribution of R65m. As a municipal entity, the stadium has to have a balanced budget and thus in order to make up for the shortfall of the revenue budget the expenditure budget had to be reduced by R18.5m,” said De Reuck.
According to De Reuck, the Covid-19 pandemic had a direct impact on the income budget for the 2020/21 financial year, resulting in “significant budget reductions in areas such as repairs and maintenance, cleaning, security and other expenditure, etc”.
During the current financial year, 2021/22, the stadium earned revenue of R12m and for the same period expenditure equated to R10.8m for repairs and maintenance, cleaning and security contracted service.
This revelation came after DHL announced yesterday that it had entered a multi-year naming rights partnership.
Details around the deal with DHL were not provided by the City.
The 62 000-capacity stadium is also the new home of the DHL Stormers and DHL Western Province, who moved there earlier this year, effective from June 1.
DHL first signed on as title sponsor of the two professional teams in 2011.
STOP CoCT group administrator Sandra Dickson said there had been no public participation process in the renaming of the stadium.
“This stadium is a public asset and expected to be used by the public. One would expect CoCT to have taken the public in confidence when this decision was made.
“The stadium was refurbished with ratepayers’ funds and new executive suites were added recently.
“The cost of maintaining the stadium comes to over R80m per year.
“The new tenants are wished well in their new home and the hope is that this drain on public funds will finally end,” Dickson said.
Cape Times