Stadium Management South Africa was appointed to independently administer the country’s FNB, Orlando, Dobsonville and Rand stadiums by the City of Johannesburg in 2009. SMSA independently manages and funds the commercial business of these multi-purpose venues, playing host to world class events from football and rugby matches, concerts and festivals to political rallies.
These stadia under SMSA’s stewardship are government-owned venues, which are privately and independently administered by SMSA on a full financial risk basis. This means that SMSA is precluded from receiving any management fee, subsidy or grant in its running. Managing these multi-million rand venues therefore requires SMSA to have mastery of services across a range industries including finance and commerce, operations and facilities management and event planning.
Behind SMSA’s operations is its trio of co-owners: Jacques Grobbelaar, Barry Pollen and Russell Stephens. Between them, the directors have accrued decades of experience in the event, construction and financial sectors of the industry, with Chief Executive Officer Jacques Grobbelaar describing the company’s current position in the country. “As Stadium Management South Africa we have established ourselves as the leading stadium management company in South Africa due to our sustainable, profitable and successful business model following the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa ™. We were determined not to allow any of the stadiums under our banner turn into white elephants in its wake, and so we have been delivering on all aspects with a sustainable and profitable 10-year plan that does not burden the taxpayer.”
This success of this plan was achieved through securing long-term tenancy agreements with South Africa’s biggest and most popular sports teams, namely Kaizer Chief FC, Orlando Pirates FC and Moroka Swallows FC. These came via strategic agreements with the Premier Soccer League to host its biggest matches and, equally, through its partnership with South Africa’s largest promoter, Big Concerts. “We have a team of highly qualified, experienced and knowledgeable individuals,”Grobbelaar continues, “which is capable of producing results and solutions for both the short- and long-term to clients in all corners of the globe through our extensive service offerings. We have offices in South Africa, the United Kingdom and in the United States of America and offer personal, tailor-made solutions to suit all our clients’needs and wants.”
“Stadium Management South Africa is South Africa’s leading stadium management group and fields the most dynamic and capable team in the country to manage flagship sporting venues.”
As he goes on to explain, Stadium Management South Africa has a clear mission statement behind what it seeks to achieve. “We strive to deliver solutions that allow our clients to maximise opportunities for their venues or events by leveraging all available channels to deliver clear and tangible benefits. We strive to understand our stakeholders, their ambitions and objectives and match these with geographic, business and demographic opportunities. We also pride ourselves on matching their ambition with requirements and commercial viability.”
The adaptability both of SMSA as a company and of the stadia it manages affords it the ability to offer the full range of venue options, which can be tailored to be suitable for a host of different events. This has, in large part, seen it play host to some events of colossal scope, featuring many of the world’s most notable acts, among them One Direction, Rihanna, Justin Bieber and even the legendary Bruce Springsteen. Other highlights from its vast portfolio from the past year range from providing the venue for the legendary Bafana Bafana vs. Zambia fixture, the Shell V-Power Nitro+ Festival and the hugely important Nelson Mandela National Memorial Service.
According to Jacques Grobbelaar, among SMSA’s real success stories over the past year has been on the Black Economic Empowerment side of the business. “First of all, we have been very successful in meeting a number of key transformation milestones,”he says. “We established a transformation department that’s primarily focused on the company’s transformation and empowering strategies.”This has brought with it a tremendous increase in the company’s BEE achievement, improved by more than 40% in the space of a year and now seeing it boast the Level 4 Broad Based BEE Status Level.
“We have a workforce of 55 permanent employees, whichis currently representative of more than 80% of the designated group, and 50% of this is on a management level. Our Board of Directors is also more than 50% represented by employees from the designated group,”Grobbelaar expands. Additionally to this transformation, Stadium Management South Africa maintains a continuous commitment to creating enterprise opportunities and empowering the communities in which it exists.
“We established our community cleaning project in August 2013,”he states, “which has created in excess of 14 000 jobs in the communities surrounding our stadiums. We saw this as an opportunity to significantly improve the lives of the people living in the communities surrounding our four stadiums. The mission of this project is to alleviate unemployment by employing community members to assist in the cleaning of our stadiums during all events which take place there.”
The long term objective of this project is to assist the teams of community cleaners in establishing their own cleaning businesses, which SMSA will then in turn use as a service provider for stadium cleaning during its own events. To date this project has experienced real, quantifiable success, creating in excess of 14 000 jobs and seeing SMSA invest more than R 3.3 million in sustaining the endeavour.
Jacques Grobbelaar puts SMSA’s success to date down to its faultless attention to detail, ensuring that effective and solid foundations are first in place to allow everything else to then be added. “We focus on the absolute core of the business and build it from there, concentrating on each individual aspect, no matter how small, and determining how it integrates with the other elements within the business. A sustained focus on the basics is key, as this is what influences the bigger things within the business. Business standards, policies and procedures is what should drive a business.”
This focus now shifts to the future, and the approaches which will allow SMSA to further cement its status at the forefront of the market. This will have much to do with the staff who carry out its services, as Grobbelaar explains. “The key to improve our future performance,”he says, “is to find and appoint the right people, with the right skills set and the right emotional intelligence, and then manage their in-post training and development and transfer their theoretical knowledge into practical skills. We need to get them to believe in transformation and empowerment of themselves and the business as a whole.”
Buying into the whole ethos of Stadium Management South Africa in turn brings significant benefits to the individual, as he goes on to delineate. “We make our employees feel valued and part of a family. We create an empowering work environment and provide tangible career development opportunities. We have established an Employee Shareholders Scheme, whereby employees are actual shareholders of the business and receive the profit share that comes along with their shareholding. We also believe in paying well above market related salaries for the quality employees we employ within the company.”
It is the holistic nature of its business and the heavy focus it places on such elements of its work which will help drive SMSA to even greater heights, as Grobbelaar explains: “We would like to take the transformation achievements we already have in place and hit the next level within and outside our business. We will be focusing on further development of our employees through skills transfer and a number of additional aspects, and partnering with some of our key stakeholders to decrease unemployment in the communities surrounding the stadiums, by creating sustainable business opportunities for the community members.”