Former Banyana Banyana captain, Janine van Wyk has made an impassioned plea to sponsors, businesspeople and the community at large for assistance towards women’s football in South Africa.
Through her club in the Hollywoodbets Super League, the JVW co-owner and assistant coach of the first team has put out a crowdfunding request on their socials as the situation gets dire.
https://x.com/JVWGirlsFootbal/status/1809094984840220737
“Hopefully going the crowdfunding route not only gets in money for the club but to make people aware that women’s football is really struggling in our country,” said Van Wyk.
It is a known fact that most teams in South Africa’s topflight football are going through challenges due to lack of financial support. Clubs are currently travelling long hours by road to play matches and have to return to their base almost immediately. More often than not, they also don’t get proper nutrition as team owners cannot afford.
Van Wyk, the most capped footballer on the continent – male or female – with 185 appearances for her country, fears that if teams can’t secure financial sponsorship deals, some may not be able to cater for what is needed in a top league.
“This is the reality of it because if you can’t sustain the football team or football club or a group of players that are willing and want to play, you know it’s going to have to fold at some point, and that is unfortunate part,” she cautioned.
Not so long ago, Thunderbirds Ladies came out with the same plea, calling for anyone to help as they were having difficulties. The Eastern Cape-based side is currently bottom of the Hollywoodbets Super League table after 18 games and are yet to win a match.
“Since the beginning of the season, we have tried everyone for financial assistance, but it appears no one is coming to our rescue. Our greatest challenge is that players leave for greener pastures where they are offered monetary incentives and we are unfortunately left with inexperienced playing personnel, hence our position in the league. We are hopeful, however, that we will overcome this, but without financial backing it makes our mission almost impossible,” said Team Manager Gugu Diko.
Van Wyk sat down with CentreCircle.online to outline the purpose of their crowdfunding request, which she hopes will open the eyes of many to the struggles of women’s football.
What are the challenges?
You know what, a lot of teams are struggling financially to be stable, to be able to perform and to have some real stability. There are a lot of teams that don’t have sponsorships to back them. We, and I’m saying we because JVW is one of those clubs that are struggling financially. We are one of the top teams in the league and it might look like we have a lot of money to lay out but because we have development structures it does help here and there but to be able to sustain a first team in the Hollywoodbets Super League is challenging, we are not really getting enough income to sustain that – and that means traveling costs, that means accommodation, stipend for players, meals, equipment, and personnel needed at the top level.
Why crowdfunding?
We put it out there as crowd funding to get some money in from the community because it’s very difficult to get sponsorship for women’s football in our country and that is because we’ve been told that women’s football is not as big as it is and what we want it to be, if we compare it to Europe. We don’t have crowds of 10,000 people coming to our games, we don’t have home games where we are able to give the sponsors the necessary ROIs and we are limited to what we can offer potential sponsors.
Awareness…
There are some teams that are training every single day to improve their game and we’re training maximum three times a week, with some players having challenges of juggling full-time jobs. You find that some of these girls can’t even make training so you are limited to few numbers at training because they have to choose their full-time jobs where they can actually earn money than be at training where you hardly get anything. When I was playing, we were told that with the success of the national team women’s football will evolve in our country and I just feel like it’s going backwards because there’s no money in women’s football and it’s really difficult as a club owner at JVW to sustain a football club without any financial stability.
The results show…
I think we’re all struggling, and people out there are saying woman’s football is really becoming competitive, and any team can take points from any team in this league, that is because they don’t realize that certain teams have to travel 10 hours to play a game. For instance, at JVW we often lose points away from home because of the travel, because of not fueling the players, because we only arrive there an hour before warmup and sometimes have to get dressed in the bus. So those are the challenges that make us unable to perform the best that we can as a team. I think all the other teams in the Hollywoodbets feel the same.
Danger of teams folding…
Oh yes, that is the reality of it because if you can’t sustain the football team or football club or a bunch of players that are willing to play, it’s going to have to fold at some point and that is unfortunate part of it. Whilst the rest of the world is climbing and becoming successful and making full-time careers out of the sport, woman’s football in South Africa is just going backwards and there’s no support. And if we’re going to continue to do that it’s going to affect our national teams as well because the talented players won’t be recognized, won’t be identified to feed into the national system.
Message to potential sponsors/supporters…
You can’t just put your money where there is success – you need to help build success, and building needs stability. If you don’t have that stability there’s no way that you can achieve success. What more needs to be done to show the corporate world or any other investor or sponsor to get backing and support? My message is don’t wait for success to happen before you want to support someone, be that support system that helps women’s football or helps another team or club grow into becoming successful.
By Matlhomola Morake
