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The Untold Story Behind the PSL at 30: ‘We Had to Compete for 90 Minutes and Cooperate Afterwards’
THIRTY YEARS is a long time in football.
In three decades, coaches come and go. Players become legends before quietly fading into memory. Sponsors change, television rights are renegotiated, and supporters move from transistor radios to smartphones without ever missing a kick.
Institutions rarely enjoy that luxury.
Across Africa, leagues have risen with great promise only to stumble under poor governance, weak commercial planning or political interference. Some have survived. Few have flourished. The Premier Soccer League (PSL) has.
As South Africa’s premier football competition enters its 30th season, it stands as the continent’s most commercially successful league, boasting broadcast partnerships worth billions, sponsors that have stayed for decades and an administration that has become the envy of much of African football.
None of it, Irvin Khoza insists, happened by accident.
Sitting in the boardroom of the PSL offices in Parktown, Johannesburg reflecting on three decades of professional football, the PSL chairman begins not with trophies or television deals, but with a confession.
“The thing which is untold,” he says, leaning forward as if to make sure I clearly hear him – speaking as he did through the face mask that has become a permanent feature of his since the outbreak of Covid-19, “I’m telling you about it for the first time.”
It is the story of a private meeting. Not between allies. But between South African football’s fiercest rivals.
The conversation that changed everything
South Africa had just returned to international football. The country itself was embracing democracy and a new Constitution. On the field, Orlando Pirates had achieved what no Southern African club had done before, winning the CAF Champions Cup at their first attempt. It should have been football’s crowning achievement. Instead, it exposed its greatest weakness.
“There was no prize money,” Khoza recalls. “And because of that we realised something had to give. We asked ourselves: how do we commercialise our league?”
That question led him to Kaizer Chiefs chairman Kaizer Motaung.
Long before there was a Premier Soccer League, before there were glossy television productions and lucrative sponsorship agreements, the two men who spent every derby watching their teams trying to outwit one another reached an uncomfortable conclusion.
South African football had supporters. But it did not have a sustainable business model.
“The league meetings were never discussing commercial issues,” Khoza recalls. “It was about fixtures, venues, and competitions like the Iwisa Spectacular. We were not discussing guaranteed income.” Popularity, they realised, would never be enough. Football needed to become a product.
Convincing Corporate South Africa
The challenge was bigger than football. Corporate South Africa, Khoza remembers, had little appetite for investing in the game. “There weren't many people in the corporate boardrooms who could champion our cause,” he tells me. “A lot of the decision-makers had a predisposition towards cricket, rugby, athletics and marathons.”
Football was loved in the townships. It had yet to earn respect in the boardroom.
“So we had to punch above our weight.”
Khoza and Motaung began quietly developing what would become the blueprint for the PSL. Only one other person was initially brought into the project. Raymond Hack – then with Wits University FC. “We enlisted Raymond because he was meticulous” Khoza says.
“He loved records and documentation.”
Even then, secrecy mattered. Instead of calling one meeting with all the club owners, Khoza and Motaung invited the chairmen and women individually.
“We wanted every person to believe they were the first to hear the idea.” He says, clearly proud of the ‘genius’ of their ways. Slowly, support grew.
The biggest sacrifice nobody saw
Perhaps the most remarkable revelation from Khoza’s recollections is not how the PSL was conceived. It is what South Africa’s biggest clubs willingly gave up to make it happen. In the old National Soccer League (NSL) era from 1985 to 1995, gate takings were king. Whenever Pirates or Chiefs travelled, stadiums filled. Host clubs often earned more from those matches than the Soweto giants themselves.
“When Pirates or Chiefs came to your stadium, you made more money than we did,” Khoza says, chuckling.
The existing gate-control system involved league officials managing ticket sales, collecting revenue, paying stadium costs and distributing income. It was cumbersome. More importantly, it entrenched inequality.
Pirates and Chiefs could have protected the status quo. Instead, they argued for something radically different. Clubs should keep their own gate receipts. The future
should be built on guaranteed commercial income rather than unpredictable attendance. “It was a big sacrifice,” Khoza says. “Our footprint was second to none. We filled stadiums everywhere.”
But leadership, in his mind, required looking beyond immediate self-interest. “We were market leaders. And if market leaders see challenges in the market, they must intervene.” From those discussions emerged what would become one of the PSL’s founding principles.
“We compete for 90 minutes,” Khoza says. “And cooperate afterwards.” Three decades later, he still considers those seven words the league’s greatest achievement.
Selling an idea nobody could see
Creating a league on paper was one thing. Convincing sponsors to invest in something that did not yet exist was another. Khoza remembers the scepticism vividly. Tony van der Kraaij of South African Breweries listened carefully before asking a brutally simple question. “What is new?” “The same teams. The same players. The same officials. What product are you selling me?”
It forced football to think differently. “We realized he had a point. To him we were talking about pie in the sky stuff. After all, the World Cup is a product. The (UEFA) Champions League is a product. Formula One is a product. So what is the PSL?”
The answer lay not in the football itself, but in everything around it. Governance. Compliance. Marketing. Commercial certainty. Professional administration.
The league began drafting governance pillars, service manuals and commercial frameworks. These were documents that supporters would never read but which sponsors desperately wanted to see. Khoza has them all piled up on the boardroom table in front of him and even stands up to get one to show me, explaining what each of the titles refer to.
The man who gave investors confidence
The search for credibility eventually took Khoza, Motaung, Danny Jordaan and Pooby Govindsamy to England and Germany. They expected to learn. Instead, they were surprised. “There were things we were already doing better than them.” During that visit they heard that Trevor Phillips had become available after leaving English football. They interviewed him.
“He said he had to speak to his wife.” Khoza smiles at the memory.
Phillips’ greatest contribution, he insists, was not tactical. Nor was it administrative.
“It was investor confidence.” His bearing mattered. His voice mattered. His appearance mattered. “When people saw him, they saw the English league.”
Initially planning to stay only a year, Phillips changed his mind after his wife visited South Africa. She fell in love with the country. He bought property in Bryanston. Then another in Morningside. He stayed.
Many still mistakenly believe Phillips built the PSL. Khoza shakes his head. “He didn’t build it. But he embodied it.”
Breaking free
If the PSL’s first battle was winning over sponsors, its second was liberating itself from an unfavourable television contract. At the time, the SABC enjoyed a near monopoly. The broadcaster drafted the agreements. Football simply signed them.
“We discovered how one-sided the contracts were.”
The breakthrough came years later when new broadcasters entered the market. For the first time there was competition for football rights.
The late Peter Mancer developed a tender process, separating free-to-air and pay-television rights while creating combined packages that encouraged competitive bidding.
Fortune helped. The SABC failed to exercise an important renewal clause within the required period. The PSL went to market. Arbitration followed. The league won. “That was how we got liberated,” Khoza says.
The consequences transformed South African football. Broadcast revenue became the league’s economic engine. Even today, Khoza says, the principle remains unchanged. Administration is funded first. The balance is shared equally among member clubs.
Why equality mattered
Equal distribution has often puzzled observers. In Spain, Real Madrid and Barcelona dominate television income. England uses a more complex formula that rewards popularity and television appearances. South Africa chose another route.
“The sacrifices we made behind the scenes are not understood,” Khoza says.
He points to the league table as proof.
“There are no automatic candidates for relegation anymore.”
Promoted clubs survive. Smaller clubs compete. Competitive balance has become one of the PSL’s greatest commercial assets.
“That’s how you build a product,” he says.
Running football like a business
Khoza dismisses the suggestion that local football can simply copy European models. South Africa’s realities are different. CAF competitions stretch schedules. Broadcasters demand certainty. Sponsors expect contractual obligations to be met.
While some African leagues suspend domestic fixtures to accommodate continental competitions, the PSL cannot.
“We are running a fully-fledged professional league. Our income comes from the broadcaster. We have obligations.”
Professionalism, he says, is not glamorous. It is discipline.
More than football
When I ask him why companies such as MTN remain committed after nearly two decades, Khoza reaches for an unusual comparison.
“The closest industries are churches and political parties.” Both rely on belonging.
Football, he argues, creates something even deeper.
“When supporters speak, they don’t say ‘the club won.’ They say ‘we won.’”
That emotional ownership is football’s greatest commercial asset.
“It pierces the heart.”
The PSL, he says, does not push itself onto consumers. It pulls them.
“When people hear Pirates…
“When they hear Chiefs…
“When they hear Sundowns…
“They are drawn to it.”
The institution
Near the end of the conversation, Khoza reflects on legacy. Not his own. The league’s.
He quotes an East African proverb “When an elder dies, a library burns.”
His concern is institutions. Individuals leave. Institutions remain.
Thirty years after the PSL’s birth, he believes South African football has finally built one.
“We still have oxygen in the tank.”
That is arguably the greatest achievement. Not merely surviving, but creating something capable of outliving its founders.
As the conversation ends, Khoza returns to the philosophy that shaped everything.
It is not written in the league’s constitution. Neither is it engraved on a boardroom wall.
But it remains the principle that transformed rivals into partners and football into business.
“Compete for 90 minutes. And cooperate afterwards.”
Thirty years later, the Premier Soccer League (PSL) is still living by those words.
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