South Africa is mad about sport. We have an entrenched sense of ourselves as a sporting nation that is tied to our identity as South Africans. Sports make a major contribution towards bringing us together – it’s almost unpatriotic not to support Bafana Bafana or the Springboks.

We have a proud record of sporting success, including winning the 1996 AFCON Cup trophy in football, 4 Rugby World Cup championships, and 12 Olympic gold medals over the past 30 years. We’ve also become one of the few developing nations able to host major global sporting events, boasting successfully staged world cups in football, netball, rugby, and cricket.

What is the wider social and economic impact of our sporting success – and how is it achieved? Are we just inherently good at sports, or do we have to nurture talent from the ground up, so that our sporting excellence and its positive knock-on economic effects are sustainable?

Training sports stars from primary school to professional

Sport contributes significantly to South Africa’s social fabric, starting at school level. It helps foster unity, talent development, and overall wellness, so it can make a notable impact on community upliftment and opportunities for the youth in disadvantaged communities. Our extensive school sports system, in both public and private schools, has developed an ecosystem that can carry talented athletes right through to national and professional success, especially in sports like rugby and cricket. 

Businesses getting involved in the sector often focus on grassroots development, especially when they are sport-related businesses with a young target market. The Sports Trust is a non-profit organisation dedicated to supporting sports development. It collaborates with various partners, including corporates and government entities, to fund a variety of initiatives in community sport and recreation. In 2023 and 2024, to mention just 1 example, the trust sponsored multipurpose sports courts with facilities for soccer, netball, basketball, volleyball, and tennis at 2 Soweto schools.

The Sports Trust Golf Challenge hosted by Sun International and Nedbank every year gives amateur golfers the chance to ‘play like a pro’ on the Gary Player Golf Course and raises significant amounts for the trust to devote to sports development in disadvantaged schools and communities. Nedbank is a founding trustee of the trust, which has raised R46 million in donations since 1995.

Sports clubs and the rise of the sport economy

Changes in the economics of sport have also fostered the growth of local sports clubs in recent decades. The professionalisation and commercialisation of various sporting disciplines, and especially the change in broadcasting revenues – with multiyear deals that negotiate broadcast rights with the governing bodies of individual sports – are the financial engines behind this growth. They generate revenue from streaming, subscription, merchandising, and other marketing services.

Sports clubs have evolved from local entities to continental or global brands. Massive media deals are secured in different territories for different sports. In the USA, the National Football League (the regulatory body for American football) secured a deal worth more than $100 billion over 10 years with the major US networks, to last until 2033. Similarly, rights deals negotiated with the English Premier League and major European and British satellite and streaming networks go for billions of pounds. In the 2024–2025 season alone, revenues are above £9 billion.

Cost vs reward of hosting or competing in global sports

SA is perhaps the only country in the world to have hosted the world cups of 4 different team sports – rugby, football, netball, and cricket. We’ve produced trophy-winning teams like the reigning rugby world champions, the Springboks, and individual sports stars like swimmer and Olympic gold medallist Tatjana Smith. These competitors were nurtured from a young age in centres of South African sporting excellence, and we need to continue investing in the infrastructure and systems of these facilities to enable future success.

Being chosen to present a large sporting event is often seen as a golden economic opportunity for host cities. Many believe that these mega events make a significant contribution to the national economy, with an impact extending beyond the immediate costs and revenues. However, the cost of infrastructure developments, including stadium construction, venue building, and transportation upgrades, typically runs into billions of dollars. 

Host countries expect the expense to be offset by anticipated long-term benefits like increased tourism from an influx of international visitors, enhanced global visibility, and the positive impact on local businesses. This was one of the justifications used to support South Africa’s bid for both the football and rugby world cups, but these events often generate more short-term costs than long-term revenues. Their real benefits are related more to increased visibility for the host.

Long-term economic impacts

• Tourism
  From a tourism point of view, large-scale sporting events should be part of a long-term policy for promoting South Africa to tourists – not a bid to profit from increased tourism only during the championship. The number of tourists at the 2010 FIFA World Cup from traditional destinations (Great Britain, the Netherlands, Germany) did not increase much, but we saw an increased number of tourists, both during and after the tournament, from countries like Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay, who are not typically visitors to SA.
  
  
• Media
  For most of the 20th century, hosting the Olympic Games or the FIFA World Cup was financially out of reach for many. These events could be held only in developed countries in Europe or North America. But then the explosion of broadcast rights and revenues began to amount to billions, providing an economic opportunity. South Africa’s long-term economic benefit from its sporting success globally probably lies in the media revenues it has generated, rather than direct employment or longer-term job creation.
  
  
• Marketing
  As with direct revenues from broadcast deals, there are many downstream marketing opportunities in sporting success. There are opportunities in merchandising, branding, and other service industries that connect to tourism and media in the sport business. Nedbank is actively involved in sports development and is a nationally recognised partner in benchmark South African sports events like the Nedbank Golf Challenge and football’s Nedbank Cup.

The bottom line is that winning gold medals and hosting prestigious tournaments can be a costly business – but their real benefit lies in inspiring future generations to excel. The media attention they generate is also an excellent way to remind fans that funding, mentoring, and coaching at school and community level are the essential foundation of our nation’s sporting greatness.

Nedbank’s affinity programmes allow you to donate to various social causes at no cost to you. Simply link your account to the Nedbank Sport Affinity, and whenever you use the account, Nedbank will donate money to the Sports Trust to help fund sports development, identify talent, and transform under-resourced communities.