SuperSport sign deal with sleeve sponsor

After securing Ikhokha as the new sponsor on Wednesday, SuperSport United CEO Stan Matthews said this will help them to have sustainability and be able to retain their players.

On Wednesday, SuperSport announced the fintech company iKhokha, a digital tool, as a sleeve sponsor for the club.

This is the second sponsorship deal they have managed to secure in the space of a month after one with Jonsson Workwear in December.

Jonsson Workwear is Matsatsantsa’s title sponsor, and the brand has already been visible in all the matches played by the club since then.

Now, iKhokha will be visible on the left shoulder of SuperSport United shirts as per the agreement struck between the two parties.

In the past few years, SuperSport lost a number of key players to rivals Mamelodi Sundowns as they tried to balance their books, but Matthews feels this sponsorship will now help them.

“The most important thing today is the sustainability that we will give ourselves in the next three-and-a-half years that we get a front jersey sponsor and a sleeve one,” Mathews told the media on Wednesday.

“We've got committed partners that are behind us. We can now make sure that I don’t lose players and I can try and make sure my players are retained already."

Matthews said after losing Engen and Phumelela in the past, they were struggling financially and were forced to sell some of their best players, but now will be able to retain them.

“Well, over Covid we lost our sponsors and we hit some hard times at the club as you know. You saw the end results of that were selling of players to balance the books because we had Engen for six years and they stopped,” he said.

“We had Phumelela as an academy sponsor for 19 years and they stopped. So we lost two key sponsors in a space of a couple of months which left a big hole in our budget.

“We have a lot of players in our books and we had a lot of financial commitments that were fixed because when you signed those players' contracts you can’t say afterwards 'sorry we are cancelling your contract'.

“So we had a lot of financial obligations and we didn’t have any more sponsorship coming in. So over the past years we set a clear objective at the club to go out and make ourselves more financially sustainable and commercially strong.

“Last year, we had Jonsson Workwear on a three-and-a-half year deal and that gives us a nice platform and a runway now where I can know what my budget will be for the next coming years.”