Conditional approval has been given for South Africa Tourism to tie up a £42.5million sponsorship deal with Tottenham Hotspur, it was confirmed on Thursday.
Leaked documents emerged earlier in the week in South African media outlet Daily Maverick, who claimed that the country's government, through its marketing agency SA Tourism, was preparing to sponsor Spurs for 910million South African rand (£42.5million).
The media outlet claimed that they had seen documents from a presentation given by SA Tourism this month for a three-year sponsorship beginning next season and the matter was due to be discussed further by another presentation on Tuesday night (January 31) and that the deal was close to being finalised.
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The news of the deal has caused some controversy within the South African sports community, with suggestions that such a large amount of money would be better spent on local sports development.
Then on Thursday, speaking to the media, South African Tourism's acting chief executive officer Themba Khumalo, while unable to confirm or deny the figures involved, did confirm that the deal had been given conditional approval.
"The board made a conditional approval because it commercially makes sense, but it needs communication with the stakeholders to make sure they're aligned," he said, as reported by South African media outlet news24. "The stakeholders were not engaged because we were going to do so before the leak came out.
"We believe in the engagement, but there isn’t a signed contract with the entity. There was a conversation that led to the conditional approval. There's no signed contract, but there is an intention to. We need to do due diligence and follow government processes.
"We had to halt this conversation to have this conversation, so once we complete this one, we'll look forward. The other teams had tourism partners and Spurs didn't have one. We looked at every team in that tier."
One of those other teams are Tottenham's local rivals Arsenal, who have a partnership with the Rwandan tourist board.
It has been reported in South Africa that in exchange for the £42.5million investment, SA Tourism would receive kit branding, interview backdrop branding, match-day advertising, partnership announcements, training camps in South Africa, and free access to tickets and stadium hospitality.
The deal, which has reportedly been in the works for six years, would still need to be approved by South Africa's tourism ministry and receive approval from the national treasury.
Tottenham declined to comment on the proposed sponsorship when asked by football.london, a standard response on commercial matters.
Khumalo added that the deal was about promoting tourism to South Africa in the United Kingdom rather than being a football deal as the country is one of his country's premium travelling markets.
In response to the criticism, he also stated that SA Tourism could not use its mandated budget for other areas of government spending.
"The money that is invested in tourism isn't money that's required for other needs in the country. There are departments that are dedicated to that," Khumalo said.
"Ours is to spend money to persuade travellers to come to South Africa to spend money. That is what we're legislated to do. Sport and entertainment are audience aggregators, so people will pay money to have you access their product.
"Our deal has nothing to do with football because ours is to access the viewers who watch the football to become part of the travelling market to South Africa.
"We are accessing the audience in the English Premier League so that they can come to South Africa to spend money here through tourism. This deal is not isolation with other deals that we have in place because it's not about football, it's about audiences."
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