Habana co-owned tech start-up launches app to boost sponsorship for SA Olympic medal hopefuls

Amid the SA Tourism-Tottenham Hotspur near-R1 billion sponsorship deal, a Bryan Habana co-founded tech start-up has developed an app to help SA’s 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games athletes get direct sponsorship.

Parliament told SA Tourism this week that the proposed Spurs sponsorship deal with the English Premier League side "ends today, now".

The deal created a wider conversation around sponsorship of South African teams and athletes, especially Olympians, who often struggle to find funding between Games.

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Netball SA president Cecilia Molokwane labelled the SA Tourism move "insane" as they were searching for funding for the Netball World Cup held in Cape Town later this year.

"We could do with the better investment in our sport and investing in SA federations would've been a better strategy from Tourism SA," Swimming South Africa president Alan Fritz told News24.

"Our athletes represent our country and they're ambassadors. I'd be really disappointed if this is true because SA sport is not in a good space financially."

After Sascoc’s Opex programme (short for Operation Excellence), which funded elite medal hopefuls, folded SA’s track and field, swimming and other athletes have struggled for funding.

In true South African gritty style, former Springbok Habana and business partner Mark Sharman’s company, MatchKit, came up with a solution, an app called MatchKit.co, that could help fund athletes directly, cutting out the federation red tape in the process.

"The goal is to make some of the (physically) fittest South Africans financially fit too. Generally speaking, the large majority of Olympic and Paralympic hopefuls are invariably