SA Rugby president Mark Alexander says acquiring private investors doesn’t mean the governing body plans on “selling the Springboks”.
SA Rugby is reportedly on the verge of securing a deal with private equity firm CVC, which has a stake in the Six Nations, English Premiership and URC and will enlarge its footprint in rugby by extending its commercial outreach to SA.
Speaking during the 2022 Champions Match launch, Alexander, who was recently re-elected for further four-year term, emphasised that any private investment into SA Rugby would only amount to partial ownership.
“We realise that we need to bring in private investors to help us reach our goals. We do not have the money to fund all of these programmes. We cannot just keep looking to the government,” he said.
“We need to do things for ourselves. The government cannot help us with everything. We need to complete this private equity transaction. We are not selling the Springboks, we are not selling Saru.
“We realise that we need to bring more private investors into our game. All we are doing is putting our rights into a vehicle and maximising them at a different level.”
SA Rugby recently announced that its revenue increased by 80% from 2020’s R700 million to R1.23 billion last year, driven mainly by broadcast income of R629m and sponsorships of R329m.
The British & Irish Lions series was key in that surplus, with the governing body increasing its distributions to unions to R244m.
