JOHANNESBURG – Cricket South Africa (CSA) hopes to announce a main sponsor for its Mzansi Super League this week.
The league, which has been beset with controversy going back two years, held its player draft in Johannesburg yesterday, filling six squads with 16 players each.
CSA's commercial manager, Clive Eksteen, admitted that signing a sponsor has not been easy, but he was optimistic there would be backing for the event. “There are no corporate sponsors yet. There is still a lot of work to do around all of that. We are close, very close, and hopefully in the next day or so there will be some announcements and that will get the ball rolling.”
Among the announcements will be the tournament's schedule, but given the failure to run a competition last year it is the corporate sponsorships that will be of greater interest.
“There are certainly challenges, one of those is internal. It's all been documented what happened last year,” Eksteen added about the T20 Global League, which collapsed after CSA failed to sign a broadcast deal and a main sponsor.
Corrie van Zyl, CSA General Manager during the 2018 Mzansi Super League T20 Player Draft in Johannesburg on Wednesday. Photo: Samuel Shivambu/BackpagePix
Meanwhile, the broadcast portion for this year's competition was resolved when CSA agreed to a deal with the SABC, to show the entire tournament.
Although it is understood that the SABC did not pay a fee to CSA, the federation is happy to have the tournament broadcast where it will have the largest possible audience.
The squads will gather on November 9, while the tournament will begin on November 16 and run until December 16.