Cash N Sport’s Nqobile Ndlovu reflects on business of sport in SA

Researcher Nqobile Ndlovu founded Cash N Sport in 2019 to fill the information gap that exists in Africa’s sports business sector and help organisations and the public to better understand the intricacies of sports business.

The Outlier spoke with Ndlovu. This is an edited version of our conversation.

When and why was Cash N Sport founded?

I used to work at Betway as the social media team lead for about eight years. We would travel across Africa – it was active in seven African countries – and at the time, we would try to find information on the business side of sports on aspects such as how teams are doing, their audiences, and sponsorships, and it would be very difficult to get that information.

When we asked sporting organisations these questions, they wouldn’t know that information. That’s when I realised that we have a big gap in terms of the amount of information that sports federations, teams, and individuals can access. That’s what informed the decision to challenge myself – in 2019 – to become the go-to person for insights on the business of sports.

I started researching who owns South African-based football teams, where they get their money from, how the teams are sponsored and so on. I would then write up these profiles as Twitter threads and that’s how people started to know me. That is what led me to where I am now – it was basically a lack of information and wanting to fill that gap. I gained valuable insights myself, which I use to educate the public.  

What exactly does Cash N Sport do?

There are two parts to the Cash N Sport business. One part is the media element and the other is the services element. On the media side, we are an information platform where ordinary people who don’t understand the business of sports can come and get an understanding of how the business of sports actually works. The goal is to become the number one aggregator of sports business news.

On the business side, we help organisations to better understand the sports landscape so they can make decisions about where to invest their money.  I have a partnership with Nielsen Sports, a sports data research company, where we collaborate to produce sports reports. We compiled a report last year – which I largely wrote, and they supported me with data – which was based on the business of sports betting in South Africa from 1994 to 2021. We are going to be doing more of those this year which we sell to the market.

We also do client service work. For example, I just did some work with Momentum, where they tasked me with understanding the intricacies of women’s sports in relation to the gender pay gap, the sports sponsorship gap, and the visibility gap. I did some work for Adidas in Nigeria last year, to help them understand where to spend their money.

Why is a platform like Cash N Sport necessary in Africa’s sports sector?

We have sports industries that exist in Africa which make it difficult for people to want to invest because there’s very little information available. I have had many clients who would like to invest in a certain country, but they can’t because they have very little information on what’s happening in that sporting landscape. Because of the lack of information, investors are very reluctant to get into that space.

The public also deserves to know where their money is going because so many of these sporting federations are funded by the public. If there’s going to be public funds going to a particular team and the team doesn’t use it properly, the public deserves to know.

It would be very naïve to think that sports just happen – usually there’s a significant financial element and there are administrative functions behind why sport works the way that it works. The decisions in the background influence what they see on the pitch. There are also a lot of people who work on on-field sports analysis but hardly ever anyone who works on what’s going on off-the-pitch, and these elements are interlinked because administrative decisions have an impact on the outcomes of teams and their importance.

Are there any challenges that you face operating in this space?

A lot of the information that we need is not documented or is inaccessible on digital platforms because we don’t record information well in Africa. Another challenge is that federations typically don’t want information to be publicly available. I have had interactions with teams who I’ve done reviews on who’ve requested that I take down certain information, which is surprising because this is publicly available information. I’m not an investigative journalist so if that information is private and can’t be used in a public context, I don’t publish it.

What are some of Cash N Sport’s most significant achievements so far?

Establishing a small black business in a very difficult field to get into was a big step. This is the second year of the business operating fully as an entity. We have quickly established a reputation as a leading provider of information on the business of sports in Africa. We have also done a lot of impactful work on educating the public on the business of sports. The clients that we have picked up also have a lot of pedigree and that is a positive sign for the future. It just shows that there’s some important work happening here.

What are some of the aspirations that you have for Africa’s sports business landscape?

We need to start setting global standards if we want global outcomes. I don’t think we have limitations in terms of talent and ambition. We might not be able to compete with America or Europe and our business models need to speak to that. We will probably always be an exporting country in terms of talent.

If I were to advise administrators and sports industry role players, I would emphasise the need for competent and capable leadership that understands their scope of work so that they can drive progressive outcomes. We make a lot of mistakes when we try to cut corners and not get the right people in place, especially if I look at some of the individual teams that we have across our sporting codes, where you can just see that there’s almost a lack of qualified people running some of these organisations. Some of the outcomes clearly reflect the quality of the people in leadership positions.

In terms of the management of sports in this country, we need to get a clear view of where we are in the world and who we are competing against, not just on the pitch but off the pitch as well. We need to market ourselves better because if you are not a marketable destination that people want to go to, you are going to find it very difficult to compete. We need to run sports like a business in this country.

Most importantly, we have not done a very good job at nurturing sports at grassroots level in this country. We don’t have enough children playing school sports or enough development programmes. If we don’t nurture grassroots sports, all our sporting codes will suffer, and we won’t be able to build a business around our sports.

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