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The Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban.
Durban – The eThekwini Municipality will fork out R5 million to stage two soccer events at Durban’s Moses Mabhida Stadium.
A report tabled during an executive committee meeting yesterday said the municipality would have to spend millions to host matches between Bafana Bafana and Nigeria and Bafana and Botswana.
The deputy city manager for health and social services, Musa Gumede, said the city had been approached by the South African Football Association (Safa) to host the two matches because Durban had become “a venue of choice for national and international tournaments and football matches”.
South Africa will meet Nigeria for the Nelson Mandela Challenge on August 14 and the city will pay R1.5m towards that.
Gumede said the benefits of hosting the match were that eThekwini would receive a 15 percent profit made from ticket sales and another 15 percent profit from suite/hospitality ticket sales.
For the match against Botswana on September 7 the city would pay R3.5m. But the costs have not been finalised because the city is in talks with the provincial government to pay 50 percent of the bill. If an agreement is reached, the benefits are to be shared equally between the city and province.
“The council is entitled to 80 percent of the net profit from ticket sales and Safa gets 20 percent. This is for the general ticket sales and hospitality package,” he said.
Municipal spokesman Thabo Mofokeng said the money the city was contributing would go towards hiring the stadium, because the city had to pay every time it used the stadium, and other money would go towards advertising and marketing.
Members of opposition parties said the decision to host the matches was a “great initiative”.
DA councillor Heinz de Boer said he hoped children would be given tickets and watch the games “in the spirit of Nelson Mandela’s love for children”.
Minority Front councillor Patrick Pillay said such matches should be used as an opportunity to encourage social cohesion.
In June last year, the city said it had spent R50m since the World Cup to attract events to the stadium. It said it had generated an income of more than R207m in two years.
But Lilian Develing of the Combined Ratepayers’ Association of Durban said she was outraged the city was paying to host the matches.
“The city keeps complaining that the rates base is not growing, but they keep spending millions to host games,” she said.
Isipingo Ratepayers’ Association chairman Darmanand Nowbuth said while he supported the national team, the city needed to consider the needs of ratepayers.
“Already residents are faced with exorbitant rates, electricity and water costs,” he said. – The Mercury
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