Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 130, May 2020 | Page 27

SPAR Women’s 10km Pretoria
FNB Durban 10K City Run
refunds to entrants. Also, refunds are not simple and bring additional banking and
staffing costs. Even providing T-shirts or medals to entrants comes at additional
cost, especially since collection is impractical or impossible for many (and may
even be prohibited by lockdown regulations).
Events that have only just opened their entries are more open to some form of
refund, as they are dealing with less administration. Alternatively, those events that
do offer refunds often have special conditions, either working with their sponsors’
support, or they have insurance that allows for such situation.
For example, every World Athletics Platinum Label event (or a Gold Label event
applying for Platinum status, such as the Sanlam Cape Town Marathon) must
under the World Athletics Label regulations have a full cancellation insurance
policy, which of course adds the policy premium costs to total expenses. It is only
included at Platinum level, as until now it was both unusual and expensive. The
likelihood is that this will become both more common, and still more expensive, in
the post COVID-19 environment.
Postponement Preferred
It soon becomes clear that facing the choice of cancellation or postponement,
the latter is the better of two bad outcomes. At least postponement could see
participants get a chance to compete, the sponsors to get a return on their
investment, the suppliers to use any pre-paid materials and charge for their
expertise, and for the sport to continue. Therefore, many event organisers and
sports federations are playing the ‘long game’ by leaving the dates to the point
where they will only change from postponement to cancellation when their options
have clearly run out.
For example, the Boston Marathon put their event out to 14 September, with
the London Marathon taking 4 October, which these major marathons felt would
avoid other key dates such as the Chicago Marathon (11 October), World Half
Marathon Championships (17 October), and New York Marathon (1 November). At
present, the Berlin Marathon is the only major to have cancelled, as the German
government has declared that events over 5000 people will only be allowed after
October 24, which means they would need to go to at least mid-November to find
a date. Interestingly as it stands none of these marathons will provide athletes with
Olympic qualification for Tokyo 2021, as that window only returns on 1 December.
The South African Structure
As I have written before in this column, our SA athletics structure and event
organisation differ significantly from international examples – we are virtually
unique, and frequently admired, for this. Briefly, no-one can compete in any
athletics event unless they are a registered runner, linked to a club, to a province,
and so to Athletics South Africa (ASA). The sales of temporary licenses give the
non-club runner affiliation to ASA, through the event, for the day. Events are
compelled to be hosted by or through a club or province, assuring participants (and
authorities) of basic standards of organisation, safety and accountability.
sold to the individual athletes through the province and club structure, which brings
in additional national income, with a nominal administration gain for the province.
Since every event is sanctioned by ASA, they (controversially) control the TV rights
for all events. Although the larger individual events could benefit from negotiating
their own coverage, the sport as whole benefits from the group negotiation, as it is
possible to package the more desirable events (to broadcasters and advertisers)
with less desirable events that are equally important to broadcast for promotion
and exposure of the sport. This is considerably hampered by the national
expectation for SABC to be the exclusive broadcaster, but is likely to evolve given
the increase in World Athletics events that have to be broadcast to much larger
international audiences. That move will increase sponsorship value.
The point is that the our national structure requires millions to operate, and
gains the major portion of its income from TV rights, the license system, and
sponsorship. This is augmented by sports funding from the national lottery. Without
this income, the sport cannot be administered, cannot send teams to international
events, cannot hold symposiums or convene training squads, and cannot evolve.
Provincial Sustainability
Provincial athletic structures primarily gain income from events. There is the
nominal amount from club license sales, and this is augmented by temporary
license sales, which can be significant from the major participation events such as
FNB CityRun, SPAR Women’s and Totalsports Women’s races. These races can
typically generate R70,000 to R80,000 for the province. However, the major income
comes from a (typical) 10% race levy of entry fees of each race, with some of the
largest races bringing in anything from R500,000 to a couple of million Rands for
the province. Other income from event applications and club affiliations tends
to be relatively negligible, by comparison. In some case, sponsorships and local
government and/or lottery support assists in balancing the books.
Without funds, provinces can’t send teams to national championships and can’t
run an office to sustain the administration of the sport. Typically, the province will
select teams for three track and field championships, three road championships,
and the national cross country championship. That can be in the region of R2.8
million in travel and accommodation, etc. Meanwhile, office set-up and staff can
be another R2 million a year, and those are only the start of the expenses to be
covered in a well-organised province.
As a very broad guesstimate figure, assuming around 1100 road events a year,
with say 1300 runners on average, and a R120 average entry free, the 19 provincial
federations gain around R18 million from entry fees. In 2020, the loss of further
In many countries, the athletics federation primarily evolved for the track and
field clubs and elite athletes. Their financial sustainability is typically based on
government or national sports council grants, and any sponsorship, so they risk
having to dance to the tunes set by others, and have volatile sustainability. By
comparison, South Africa’s system evolved through the years of sporting isolation,
with the focus and sponsorship transitioning to the mass participation of road
running. This saw the evolution of our strong club system.
The ASA license system allows the national federation to sell the branding
exposure opportunity on around 100,000 registered runners, plus all the temporary
licenses for each year, providing a significant sponsorship income. The license is
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