Bakoena Sports Blog

Lefupana Mahlomola Martin It is often said that supporter are the lifeblood of sports organisation, this is because they support the organisation socially, emotionally, physically and more importantly financially. The current football match attendance in South Africa’s Premier Soccer League (PSL) does not make for a good reading. Reports in the recent past highlights that there is a decline of football matches attendance in the PSL, with South Africa’s most supported club Kaizer Chiefs recording a less than 1000 people in a league game against Baroka FC in 2017. While the PSL does not release official statistics of match day attendance, the Kaizer Chiefs poor match day attendance should serve as an indictment to the game. Whilst Chiefs attendance normally serves as barometer, evidence also suggest that South Africa’s second biggest supported club Orlando Pirates has experienced low attendance in the recent past.   The Soweto Derby between Kaizer Chiefs vs Orlando Pirates: re

Lefupana Mahlomola Martin  On June 21, 2019, the African Cup of Nations (AFCON) will kick off in Cairo’s International Stadium, where host Egypt take on Zimbabwe’s Warriors. While the main focus will be on who will win the expanded 24-nation team tournament, there is an interesting ranking to take note, as to who is king in digital space of social media. We have analysed the social media platforms of players that are chosen to represent the 24 African nations and come up with the top 20 with the largest following on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. The top 20 is ranked from number 1 with the largest following and number 20 with the lowest following on the list.  The baseline for a player to be analysed was one million (1 M) following across all the three platforms. We have capped the ranking at 20 players because the article will just be long if we were to include every player with more than a million social media followers. The notable observation from the assessment is