JOHANNESBURG - A mystery Johannesburg businessman, Wayne Smidt, has emerged as proprietor of half of the caller that controls the brand of South Africa`s national soccer team, Bafana Bafana.
And no one - not yet the South African Football Association (Safa) - can fully explain how this happened.
Ownership of Bafana rights is concealed behind opaque shareholding structures comprising shelf companies, complicated indirect stakes and confidential licensing agreements.
But the Sun Times has accomplished that Smidt, a 40-year-old sports clothing marketer who lives in the upmarket Johannesburg suburb of Melrose North, acquired a 49.9% interest in Slam.
Slam controls the Bafana trademark through a serial of secretive deals - including one that may be joined to soccer bosses Kaizer and Bobby Motaung.
Slam earns royalties of up to 15% on each Bafana Bafana-branded clothing item sold and could get more than R80-million in revenues from the World Cup as replica jerseys fly off the shelves, according to Sunday Times estimates.
This way every sentence you cough up hundreds of rands for a replica Bafana jersey, a percentage goes to the Smidt family - who deny to discover whether other private entities with an interest in the license also stand to benefit.
Safa owns the remaining 50.1% of Slam, but appears to have been unsettled by the extent to which the little-known Smidt family will deal in the World Cup windfall.
Leslie Sedibe, who replaced Raymond Hack as chief administrator of Safa in January, said this week his administration was investigating the deal. "I have requested further particulars from Slam to help me see the nature of the correspondence between Safa and Slam," he said.
Sedibe has no thought how much Safa will gain from the mountain by the end of the World Cup and has yet to have any financial statements from Slam.
Vivian Casaletti, CEO of Shot and other brand manager of Kaizer Motaung`s club, Kaizer Chiefs, said she expected "at least" 1.6-million items to be sold this class as "the area has gone Bafana Bafana mad".
Besides replica shirts, which are sold at stores for R599, Slam`s website is selling "official" Bafana Bafana shirts for R731, and "official supporters flags" for R450.
"It`s the almost successful licensing programme in Africa," Casaletti said last week.
Casaletti refused to say how much money it expected to do during this World Cup year.
Smidt also refused, but said the Sun Times estimate of more than R80-million over the World Cup was "quite wrong".
However, if 1.6 million Bafana Bafana-branded clothing items are sold this year, and Slam makes at least R50 on each, this would well accounting for that figure. As some jerseys are being sold for around R600, a 15% royalty would come to R90.
Edgars sells Bafana jerseys for between R399 and R599, while supporter shirts sell for R89. One Edgars store said that "approximately 25%" of sales were for the more expensive jerseys. Western Cape Internet retailer sasportswear.co.za sells replica jerseys for R799, including delivery, and can`t hold up with orders.
Clothing retailers in Soweto`s Maponya Mall are doing a prosperous trade. Said one sales clerk: "Whatever we stock that`s Bafana, it`s flying, baba."
The Sun Times was capable to make that through a complicated web of entities, Smidt`s shelf company, Friedshelf 668, will be one of the big winners from Slam`s exclusive trade to sell Bafana Bafana merchandise during the World Cup.
The shares in Slam now held by Smidt have been shunted around in a serial of deals whose terms have never been made public.
Though Smidt is an unknown quantity his father`s company, Stanton Woodrush, won a protracted legal battle against Safa in 2002 for possession of the Bafana Bafana trademark for clothing.
Some time between 2002 and 2005, Stanton Woodrush sold the rights to use the post to a party called Blue Label Investments, a precursor to the JSE-listed Blue Label Telecoms.
Then, in 2005, Hack signed the deal granting Slam the sole rights to use the home team`s brand with Blue Label CEO Mark Levy.
"It was a word with a man called Mark Levy," Hack said this week. "They (Blue Label Investments) were doing various club replicas that people sell outside the stadiums. That`s how the all affair started."
He confirmed the lot came around through Stanton Woodrush`s court struggle with Safa. "Safa had registered rights to all merchandising, except (Stanton) claimed the rights to (clothing). Blue Label bought those rights from that company so we said `okay, let`s put everything in one basket - then we can at least maximise the picture and the receipts that the affiliation would get.`"
Contacted this week, Smidt confirmed he had bought the 49.9% of Shot from Blue Label Investments in 2007 through Friedshelf 668.
He said details of the sale were "private matters which are not in the world domain, and are commercially sensitive".
Levy also refused to supply any details, saying the terms remained "confidential".
While Levy said that Blue Label Investments no longer had any part in Slam, company records indicate that Levy is yet a conductor of Slam. On this point, Levy said: "I was asked by Safa to remain on as a manager of Shot and agreed to do so."
Why the half-ownership of the commercial rights to South Africa`s national soccer brand should remain confidential remains unclear.
Smidt said: "I aim to you drawing sinister motives from the refusal of a private party to expose its gross and gain information.
"Slam has naught to conceal and it is a shame that you look to wish to pass that inference from Slam`s refusal to provide you with its private financial information."
However, the deal raises questions. Blue Label`s empowerment shareholder is Nthwese Investment Holdings, which is part-owned by Bobby and Kaizer Motaung`s company, Kaizer Holdings. This would appear to demonstrate a difference of interest, as the Motaungs are blue-blooded members of South Africa`s soccer aristocracy.
Motaung is known to be faithful to World Cup local organising committee (LOC) chairman Irvin Khoza, and was a manager of Safa`s development trust when the Slam deal was signed - a deal that ultimately benefited Blue Label Investments. He is likewise a conductor of the LOC and the Premier Soccer League.
Bobby Motaung manages team Kaizer Chiefs, and is chief administrator of Lefika, the company chartered by Mbombela municipality to make its R1-billion World Cup stadium.
Bobby Motaung was just appointed Nthwese director a few years earlier the Aristocratic Label listing in 2007. But the company`s pre-listing statement, which notes that Nthwese was formed specifically to invest in Blue Label, lists Kaizer Holdings as a stockholder of Nthwese.
This week, the Motaungs denied that they had played any part in helping Blue Label Investments get the initial shares in Slam. "We never got involved with it - we own no interest in Slam," Bobby Motaung said. "We were not start of this."
Blue Label Investments sold its interest in Slam to Smidt in 2007. Motaung said Kaizer Holdings did not profit from the sale.
But other questions remain, especially Slam`s relationship with Richmark Holdings, a company run by controversial businessman Gavin Varejes. Varejes is a faithful acquaintance of other police chief Jackie Selebi, who is on trial for corruption.
Smidt says Richmark does not own shares in Slam but manages its "fiscal and administrative affairs".
Smidt also disclosed that Richmark has an indirect shareholding in Stanton Woodrush, but refused to clarify whether Stanton or Richmark stood to benefit indirectly from Slam`s royalty revenues. Source: TimesLive
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