There seems to be a trend developing in South African sport lately and it seems to be all about the money. It started off with the rugby players being offered lucrative contracts to play for European teams. Some of the players from South Africa’s world cup winning team are currently playing their rugby in Europe and earning quite a lot of money. There are really two sides to this: Can you blame them for leaving and going to play where they are obviously going to get paid more money, at the end of the day, it is all about the money. They are people with families and their futures to consider and if they are getting job offers which will pay them more then why should they turn them down? On the other hand, is them leaving South Africa good for the game of rugby in South Africa? If the top players have all left the country to go to ‘greener pastures’, will the standard and competition in the local rugby remain the same without the best players?

Now you look at cricket which I think is now really all about the money. A group of Indian tycoons have started a new cricket league in India which will run for 6 weeks and they have been able to recruit top players from across the world including top South African players. What I have found interesting is that, top cricket players in South Africa maybe earn about R1.5m a year from Cricket South Africa. That excludes their endorsements and off-field earnings. So let us say that those extra earnings earn them an additional R1.5m. So in total maybe a top cricketer in South Africa will earn R3m a year. Now with this new India Premier League (IPL) a player like Jacques Kallis will earn $900 000 (about R7m) for playing in the IPL for 6 weeks. So 6 weeks of work and you get paid R7m as compared to 52 weeks of work in South Africa and you get R3m!

There is a lot of money going into sport across the world and it is starting to pull players away from South Africa in search for that extra money. Can anything be done to stop those top players from leaving? I do not think so unless more money is put into sport in South Africa to keep the players happy and to keep that happy you have to ‘show them the money’. The large companies in South Africa have been playing a huge role in sponsoring sport in the country and one has to truly commend their efforts. But it seems like there is just no way they can compete with other countries that are having billions of dollars pumped into their sports. The sport business today seems to be all about the money. What happened to the days of, “let’s just play for fun”?

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