The Premier Soccer League in South Africa: Strategic Intervention in Dealing with the COVID-19 Pandemic

The outbreak of coronavirus in Wuhan in 2019 has forced the entire global village to close down its borders with the intention of curbing the spread of the virus. The above-mentioned outbreak has affected economies across the entire world and almost everything came to a standstill in March 2020. In line with fighting the spread of the virus, the South African president announced a lockdown which was officially implemented on 26 March 2020. Subsequent to the above call, the country’s soccer programme also came to a halt. This chapter therefore takes a critical look at how the lockdown in South Africa has impacted on the running of the Premier Soccer League. Furthermore, this chapter gives recommendations with the view to addressing some of the challenges faced by the Premier Soccer League. The research techniques employed in this study include observation of live broadcast soccer matches from the SABC sport and DSTV sport channels. To supplement the above-mentioned research technique, secondary sources were consulted, ranging from relevant scholarly journals to books and newspaper articles, in both print and electronic forms. Social distance is used in this study as a conceptual framework to understand and make sense of the strict COVID-19 regulations in South Africa.