Cape Town — There are 25 000 reasons why Cape Town can lay claim to being South Africa's sports capital after it hosted a sporting extravaganza of note in the opening two months of 2023.
Every one of the international events it hosted enjoyed a massive global television audience, and Cape Town will now rank among the world's great sporting cities along with Beijing (China), Tokyo (Japan), Moscow (Russia), Melbourne (Australia), Barcelona (Spain), London (UK) and New York (USA).
The sporting fare started on 10 January with the Betway SA20, South Africa’s explosive new T20 cricket league.. Two of the six venues included the two Western Cape's venues Newlands, which that has a capacity of 25 000 and Boland Park (10, 000). Both were packed out on most days.
The event surpassed all expectations and thrilled local and international cricket fans. It was also clear that audiences were of all ages. The competition's formula was a copy of the world’s best franchise tournament, the Indian Premier League (IPL).
All the franchise owners were from India, and there were signs that this event could become the biggest T20 tournament outside India. There were many international players in the six teams.
Apart from the host nation, there was television coverage in India, the United Kingdom, the United States, New Zealand, and worldwide on ICC.tv and Australia.
Next up was the 2023 ICC Women's T20 World Cup which fixtured most matches at Western Cape venues like Newlands and Boland Park from 10 February. The 10 countries which participated also attracted many fans who were there to enjoy the Mother City, which is the country's leading tourist destination.
With every international sporting event in Cape Town, many tourists will be mindful of the Fairest Cape's exquisite scenery, beautiful beaches and wine farms.
Internationally, the southernmost tip of Africa is regarded as one of the most attractive parts of the world, with the flat-topped Table Mountain looming over it.
Next was the weeklong A1Padel PaySpace Master Cape Town event played at the Camps Bay Sports Ground from 13 February. Padel is the world’s fastest-growing sport and has its own world tour similar the ATP Tour in tennis.
The matches were played indoors and outdoors, with the setting overlooking the spectacular 12 Apostles mountain range. As a tourist attraction, Camps Bay ticks all the boxes. Over the past few years, it has become the playground for the rich and the famous.
Accommodation venues operate at maximum capacity throughout the year.
Starting off with a women's event which drew competitors from around the country, it continued with the men's professional tour week-long event.
Many top-ranked players from around the world produced an explosive battle for honours, and the event enjoyed TV coverage in 25 countries.
It was the second time that Cape Town was the choice for the African stop for padel's world tour. It is likely that the Cape Town venue could move from Camps Bay because of the spoiling windy conditions that prevail there.
Around 20 February, there was another influx of tourists ahead of The Ocean Race in the V&A Waterfront where the in-port competition started on Friday 24 February.
As a stop-over city, Cape Town has so far welcomed the around-the-world fleet in 11 of the race’s 13 editions. This is far more than any other host port elsewhere in the world.
The 2022–23 race marks the eighth consecutive time that Cape Town has hosted a stop-over.
Colloquially known as the ‘Mother City’, Cape Town is the oldest and second-largest city in South Africa and houses the seat of the country’s parliament. The Victoria and Alfred Waterfront is a bustling area packed with stores, coffee shops, restaurants and pubs, as well as an aquarium, and art and craft markets. It also has world-class hotels and conference facilities. It's the country's premier tourist destination.
The beauty, the ingenuity and the City's endearing fans came to the fore like never before as Cape Town made another claim as one of the greatest sports cities in the world when it hosted the Formula E Cape Town.
Two days before the event, all 25 000 grandstands tickets were sold out. By this time Cape Town had given Durban and Johannesburg a run for their money in terms of being South Africa’s sporting capital. It is one of the most stunningly set cities to watch sports.
The event was hailed as Cape Town's biggest event since the 2010 Soccer World Cup. Seven matches were played at the Cape Town Stadium which over time has since hosted international football and rugby matches.
The Cape Town Stadium's enviable precinct and the nearby V & A surrounds showcased some of the town’s most famous locations and provided the racetrack for Cape Town’s inaugural ABB FIA Formula E World Championship E-Prix.
It was an event approved by the FIA's World Motor Sport Council, the world's leading all-electric race car organisation. The event turned out to be a roaring success after the hour-long thrilling track action. It was South Africa’s first world championship single-seater race in nearly 30 years.
After the event, experts reckoned that the Cape Town track was exactly the sort of circuit that Formula E should be aiming to produce in the future. The drivers found the layout challenging but welcomed the different style of racing thanks to the amount of time spent running at high speeds and negotiating a few sharp bends.
IOL Sport