Privatising sport: an elixir?
Rugby, cricket and soccer are all run by the Keystone Cops. What’s the answer?
You might not have noticed — what with the ANC and the economy melting down — but SA sport is facing a crisis no less acute than the one splintering SA’s ruling party. Arguably, the imbroglio in SA sport is more complicated to solve. On the one hand, falling attendances and vanishing television audiences mirror a widespread global malaise; on the other, some of the problems are uniquely ours. In a nutshell, our sport is trapped in the dark ages. Amateur administrators play gatekeeper roles in rugby, cricket and football, and this tenuous environment is complicated by unions and federations still being trapped in a pre-professional age. Consider the simultaneous meltdown in both Western Province rugby and cricket. In both cases, complacent boards and amateur administrators have made a mockery of one of the finest talent and gene pools in the country. Like most messes, this one was entirely avoidable. As far as the architecture of consumption in international sport is concerned, the p...
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