South Africans and local companies could not come up with the money required to buy a franchise in the new SA T20 league.

This included Patrice Motsepe’s African Rainbow Capital, according to Rapport newspaper.

“As I understand it, the tournament always anticipated that there would be some local ownership, but due to the non-competitive nature of the local bid applications, and the fact that they did not fully understand how profit would be made, these applications disappeared,” a source told the newspaper.

On Wednesday, CSA confirmed the six franchise owners for the new tournament, all of whom own IPL franchises.

The Johannesburg and Cape Town franchises were the most expensive, at nearly $28-million (R471-million) each, while the Pretoria franchise cost around $25-million (R421-million) and the Durban franchise $11-million (R185-million) .

These amounts are payable over 10 years to the new company that was established between CSA, SuperSport and Indian sports business professional Sundar Raman to manage the tournament.

SA T20 league franchise owners:

Newlands, Cape Town
Reliance Industries Limited, owners of Mumbai Indians

Kingsmead, Durban
RPSG Sports Private Limited, owners of Lucknow Super Giants

St George’s Park, Gqeberha
Sun TV Network Limited, owners of Sunrisers Hyderabad

Wanderers, Johannesburg
Chennai Super Kings Cricket Limited, owners of Chennai Super Kings

Boland Park, Paarl
Royals Sports Group, owners of Rajasthan Royals

SuperSport Park, Pretoria
JSW Sports, co-owners of Delhi Capitals

Full story