ELITE CLUBS LOSE AROUND E200 000 MONTHLY

MBABANE – The COVID-19 (coronavirus) outbreak is hitting hard on local teams.

Roughly, elite teams lose approximately E200 000 on a monthly basis in catering for teams’ running costs which mainly include players’ salaries.
The Times Sports Desk gathered that some teams will be losing money amounting to around E300 000 for those that offer competitive remuneration to their players.

Elite teams lamented the situation yesterday when drawn for comment and admitted the current situation was a huge financial drain.
Different suggestions were made by the teams on how the situation could be salvaged while others feared for the worst as it was a situation experienced for the first time ever.

Manzini Wanderers requires nearly E3 million to be sustained in each season and this transpired during their annual general meeting (AGM) last year at the Bosco Skills Centre.

Girly Johnson, the Treasurer, highlighted as she went through the team’s financials that they had to spend E250 000 per month to run the team and this included paying players’ salaries, rent and other expenses.

Moneni Pirates Team Manager Mlungisi Simelane said there were a lot of uncertainties surrounding the situation.
“We are not sure what to expect. We do not even know what kind of measure could be taken because it is not actually known when the games will resume,” he said.

Simelane added that the teams were not even sure what kind of training programme should be given to the players as it was not known when action would resume.

“It is really costly for the teams, for us, we know we will get part of what we spend now from gate takings when the games resume and we spend an estimate of E140 000 monthly for team expenses including players’ salaries and training,” he said.

The manager also highlighted that the only expense to be excluded this month was that of games preparation as there were none.
Meanwhile, Manzini Sundowns Chairman Mark Carmichael said at this stage, everybody’s eyes were on the world stage on how the top leagues in the world handled the situation.

sustenance

“Teams rely on gate takings for sustenance, we might be sending players home but we will be waiting for guidance. Here its different compared to world top leagues such as the EPL where teams get TV rights and have sponsors and in South Africa teams get SAFA grants,” said the chairman.

He added that they had a huge challenge as a club at the moment as they received no help whatsoever and preferred not to disclose figures in as far as the team’s spending was concerned.

However, Carmichael highlighted that teams were not in the same level as others spend E100 000 while others spend around E250 000 or more depending on their financial muscle.

Mbabane Highlanders CEO Melusi Dlamini lamented the costs and said teams with working players such as the forces will survive this situation.
He said he would have to verify on their monthly expenditure but emphasised this was a national disaster
“We will have to release players except for a few who will not be able to go home but we will continue paying salaries and recall players after the PLE update on resumption of games following the two months blackout,” he said.

Mbabane Swallows Communications and Marketing Manager Mancoba Mabuza also said it would be impractical to disclose figures as teams were run by individuals using personal money locally. 

The teams could not immediately establish how much they usually make monthly on gate collections as they disclosed that many factors came into play, including the team’s performance on those days and which team was the opposition.

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