Betway are the new sponsor of the Premier Soccer League top flight, the league’s chairman Irvin Khoza announced on Wednesday. All the matches will be televised live on SuperSport.
They replace DStv as the title sponsor of the league in what Khoza said was an arrangement that had been in place previously.
The new sponsor will be “a multi-year partnership is the single biggest investment in SA sport,” said Laurence Michel, the company’s chief executive officer.
Khoza said it was worth about R900-million over three years.
Betway already sponsor cricket’s Betway SA20 and also the Springboks men's rugby team and horse racing.
Michel said there would be a significant collaboration with SuperSport on content creation around the league.
“We are going to make it an even more amazing product,” he told a press conference in Johannesburg.
Khoza said the season would kick of as scheduled on August 3 and fixtures released later on Wednesday.
But the league is only getting underway on September 10.
He said rumours about a delay to the start of the season were false. “Somebody leaked an internal document and this was anti-social behaviour.”
The PSL had previously stopped betting companies becoming sponsors of clubs but this had changed over the last two years.
“Sport Pesa was an unfortunate incident,” Khoza said of the attempted disciplinary action taken against Cape Town City when they took the betting company on as their sponsor in 2017.
“At that time there was a moratorium and Cape Town City decided to go against the rules. That was most unfortunate.
“We did not frown on anybody. I had several meetings with Hollywoodbets. It is an obligation of the league to help out clubs to find sponsors.”