Subsequent to the fabulously clever technique of releasing tigers into the streets of Johannesburg in the latest attempt by the government to divert our attention away from the endless power cuts, there is now the proposal to spend just under R1-billion on an advertising deal with the London football club Tottenham Hotspur. (By the way, the news was broken by Daily Maverick on Tuesday night.) 

The idea has been met with derision. The arrangement will fall under the jurisdiction of Tourism Minister Lindiwe Sisulu; cartoonist Carlos Amato made the point on Twitter that in Sisulu’s defence, “This deal to put ‘Visit SA’ on the Spurs shirt does have the virtue of seamless brand alignment. Both Spurs & the SA state are defined by decades of waste & underachievement, and both are spearheaded by a guy who collapses whenever an opponent touches him.”

Read on Daily Maverick: From Lindiwe Sisulu, With Love: Inside SA Tourism’s R1bn proposal to sponsor Tottenham Hotspur

Actually, the similarities don’t end there. Sisulu is well known for her support of dubious economic ideas characterised by little discernible relationship between the aim, the cost, and the effect. Most recently, she published a diatribe called “Hi Mzansi, have we seen justice?” in which she blamed SA’s Constitution, of all things, and the “victims of the “rule of law” for enduring poverty.

SA’s Constitution bends over backwards to preserve both the rule of law and encourage the transformation of SA society, which is a tricky balance at the best of times. The piece was effectively a manifesto in favour of the Radical Economic Transformation faction of the ANC, for whom, it seems to me, the law is an irritant when those adherents would prefer to adopt a policy of grabbing all they can carry. Anyway, Sisulu’s attempt to sell the idea fell short at the ANC’s December conference.

So, how crazy would it be to spend just under R1-billion to have a three-year sponsorship partnership with Tottenham Hotspur FC? Well, according to the proposers, Tourism SA, the deal is a slam dunk, because, for R1-billion in expenditure, SA will get “exposure” worth R6-billion in exchange. Oh gwaard, advertising reps.

The deal is so hot that SA has to grab it quickly otherwise other “destination management organisations” (DMOs) will gazump us, the documentation says. Four deals are cited in Tourism SA’s pack: Abu Dhabi’s sponsorship of Manchester City; Malta’s sponsorship of Manchester United and Rwanda’s sponsorship of Arsenal. “If SA Tourism does not grab this opportunity, a competing DMO will!” it stated. Quelle horreur!

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But is that actually true? And anyway, is it worth it? So, using my trusty research instrument (Google), I launched a quick investigation. Malta did indeed sign a sponsorship deal with Manchester United, the cost of which was never revealed, but it was reportedly worth about $16-million. It was a three-year deal signed in 2019. There is no subsequent report on the efficacy of the deal, but plenty of people were pretty horrified.

Yet, this deal was totally overwhelmed by Rwanda’s sponsorship of Arsenal. The deal lasted four years and cost Rwanda £10-million a year for its logo to appear on Arsenal players’ shirt sleeves and around the Emirates Stadium. The deal was signed in 2021.

Manchester City signed a similar deal with Abu Dhabi, but this happened back in 2010 and the price wasn’t published, as far as I can see.

That’s it. That’s really not many deals, in fact. But what were these DMOs thinking? Well, there is a simple mathematical way of figuring it out: work out what the average tourist spends in your country, estimate the increase in tourism as a result of the deal, and, who knows, it might end up being worthwhile.

We don’t know, of course, how many people will come to SA after seeing a badge that says “Visit South Africa” on Harry Kane’s shoulder. But we do know that about 10 million tourists visited SA in the non-Covid years, and they spent on average about R15,000 each. So, to make the deal worthwhile, the deal would have to attract about 20,000 extra tourists.

Now, is it just me, or does this all sound very unlikely? You have to try and imagine the thought process. You are watching a football match and since football audiences are well known for not being particularly invested in the game itself, your gaze aimlessly floats about, and suddenly it falls on a tiny badge on one of the players’ shirts which says “Visit South Africa”. “What a brilliant idea!” you think. And immediately, you grab your phone and tell Tripadvisor to book a visit to Kruger Park. Sorry, I’m just not feeling it. If 20,000 Londoners a year are so motivated, then I am Lindiwe Sisulu’s second cousin.

Actually, you need to look elsewhere for the motivation for this kind of deal. What are the similarities between Abu Dhabi, Rwanda and Malta? The answer is that most people couldn’t find them on the map with a magnifying glass. The tourism authorities of these countries desperately needed a little profile, and consequently had to pay tons for it. But trust me, most people in London are very familiar with South Africa and probably know more than we would like them to about our beautiful country.

What else? Well, there is the dynamic of football clubs to consider, and that dynamic is simple: they never have enough money. Practically all the money they have, and some they don’t, they spend on players. But it’s never enough because there is always somebody with even more money out there, often backed by Russian oligarchs or money-rich oil states. So they are incredibly, necessarily money-grubbing.

And then there is the governmental impetus. I don’t know if this is true of SA Tourism, but if you are in government and you don’t spend your budget, the finance minister has an unkind tendency to think you might not need it. So, at the end of the financial year, government departments are often in a flat spin to spend their budgets. And in this context, huge sponsorship deals are a godsend.

For all these reasons and more, I would strongly suggest SA’s kicks for touch. Or is that a different game? DM/BM