Gather around Khosi Nation, it's time for the @KaizerChiefs review #KnowYourOwner

Chincha Guluva the visionary
Primedia & income streams
Amakhosi Stadium
Bobby & Lefika
Jessica, Ken & marketing
Abdool Muhammad
The foundation

#Amakhosi4Life #DstvPrem

As usual, I will re-post my disclaimer. I'm not an auditor, accountant nor am I a sports journalist. I am merely a football fan who likes to read up on the financial side of sport and this is all publicly available information

Let's go

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I begin with Kaizer Motaung who was born 16 October 1944 in Orlando East. He was an outrageously gifted footballer and made his senior debut for Orlando Pirates at the tender age of 16 in 1960.

For the next eight years he tore teams apart to such an extent that he gained international attention and was poached by the Atlanta Chiefs in the North American Soccer League (NASL) in 1968.

The following season, ‘Big Boy’, as he was nicknamed in America, scored 16 goals in 16 matches, ending the season as the league’s top goal scorer and being unanimously voted into the NASL All-Star Team. All the while, his former team, Orlando Pirates was in turmoil.

Kaizer returned home at the end of the NSL season to attempt to resolve the crisis which had seen key members of the Pirates team expelled but his attempts were in vain. He opted to start his own team and on the 7th of January in 1970 Kaizer Chiefs was born

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Bare in mind that Kaizer himself was still contracted to Atlanta Chiefs in America but his vision was clear and he was absorbing as much knowledge as he could in order to transfer that knowledge to his business partners who were managing Kaizer Chiefs for him back home

In 1974, @KaizerChiefs won their first league title which was made even more remarkable by the fact that Kaizer himself returned to play in the American off-season, contributing 13 goals while still contracted to Denver Dynamos who he had scored 11 goals for in 35 games.

He returned permanently despite having a massive offer on the table valued at $1m a year. Many pointed out that clubs were largely unprofessional run at home and his vision to create a club based on business principles wouldn't work. It took a lot of genius and courage

Chiefs is now the biggest team in the country. His role as an administrator has extended to servitude of the league and he served as a National Soccer League (NSL) executive before joining forces with Orlando Pirates Chairman, Irvin Khoza to form the Premier Soccer League in 1996

He also assisted South Africa’s 2010 Soccer World Cup Bid Committee; was a member of the delegation to the FIFA head office in Zurich that won the bid. Motaung was appointed as a member of the local organising committee for the 2010 event.

Kaizer Motaung was honoured by former President Jacob Zuma with the National Order of Ikhamanga in Silver on 27 April 2013. He was awarded for "His achievements as a committed and dedicated footballer and his outstanding contribution to the development of young football talent."

Financially, Chincha Guluva has come a long way. He used his earnings in America to help start Kaizer Chiefs but he has many other businesses under his belt. He is registered as a director of 31 businesses with 14 of them still active.

Soccer City which was registered in 1988 and is the first indication that Mr Motaung has long held a vision towards building a stadium precinct of some kind. Some of the other businesses are KMS Marketing and Promotions which he co-owned with Dr Irvin Khoza and Kaimot Investments

From the portfolio of businesses Kaizer has either started or been involved in, it is clear to see that his intention has always been to diversify revenue streams for the club and make them much more than just a football club.

They have a funeral plan tied to Hollard, a cellular services partnership with Blue Label Telecoms that would see their customers being able to purchase airtime and other mobile services, a publishing company, an investment arm and were once even part of the media industry.

In 1999, Primedia bought a 40% stake in Chiefs for R40 million. In this 2005 SENS announcement Primedia spoke of how crucial the Kaizer Chiefs shareholding would have for their business. In 2010, Chiefs bought back the stake from Primedia for an undisclosed fee .

Kaimot Investments is another big revenue earner for Motaung. Established in 1997, Kaimot is an asset management company and according to DNB, the company has roughly 34 employees and has annual revenue of $4.9 million.

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His big dream, the Amakhosi Stadium Sports Precinct sadly remains unfilfilled.

The Amakhosi Stadium company was registered in 2004 with Marius Grib, Bobby Motaung, Herbert Theledi, Bridgman Sithole and Kaizer Motaung as directors. Bobby Motaung was central to this project

Popularly called Bobsteak in football circles, @bobbymotaung_kc is one of the sons of the chairman, Kaizer Motaung. The 50 year old is employed as the football manager of Chiefs and is registered as a director of 36 other companies including Spartan Construction and Engineering.

He's never been a director of Chiefs despite his utterances in 2011 about a family business. Property has always been his game. One of his companies, Lakeshore Trading once owned a shopping complex which included a filling station in the Southern Johannesburg suburb of Ormonde

Sadly he lost that asset due to financial trouble in 2012. He has been involved in another major property company called Nthwese Investment Holdings which has been involved in deals worth in the hundreds of millions.

The most infamous company the Bobby is involved in is Lefika Emerging Equity which was part of a larger Lefika Group of companies. Lefika Emerging Equity was registered in 1998 and in 2006, they were brought in to manage the Amakhosi Stadium build project.

The precinct would host Kaizer Chiefs and their Youth Development Programme as well as a cricket field, rugby stadium, sports hotel, and a retail shopping center. Initially estimated to cost R656 million, the cost was soon upgraded to R1.2 billion to comply to FIFA standards

Things stalled due to various funding issues and the plan was revised twice. In August of 2010, Chiefs announced that the project had been redesigned, to make it cheaper and possible to fund, so that construction work could start in September 2010, and be finalized in August 2012

Pending the revised plan from April 2010 being approved by Chiefs, the new stadium would have a price tag of R700 million, and capacity reduced from 55,000 to 35,000 seats. It is unclear if the plans were approved but ultimately the project failed and construction never commenced

That was not the only stadium build that hit rocky ground for Lefika. In 2012, Bobby and his partners were arrested in connection with a tender to build the Mbombela Stadium for the 2010 World Cup. It was alleged that they had forged a SARS documents in the bid process.

They won the tender from the Mbombela Local Municipality to design, supervise contract administration and the commissioning of the Multi Purpose Regional Sports Stadium and Events Facility with a contract value of R143-million

In submissions to the court, Bobby had allegedly stated that his assets were worth R12 million, his car worth R4 million and earned R100 000 monthly. Charges were ultimately dropped under circumstances which included investigators being reassigned and documents going missing.

Another member of the Motaung family who is involved in the club is marketing director and club board member, 47 year old former beauty queen, Jessica Motaung. Jessica has always had an eye for marketing and stealing the limelight.

In December 1998 she shon in her modeling career was the Ms. SA First Princes and Ms. World Second Princess. She also ran the show from behind the scenes through her own events, production and promotions company, which operated in the entertainment and football industry.

In 2001 Jessica and her partner, Ken Simmons registered a company called Jessica And Ken Entertainment Productions which offered football match viewing packages as part of their services. Packages retailed at R25000 per suite including tickets, parking, a stocked bar and staff

She has starred in marketing Kaizer Chiefs who have attracted some of the biggest deals we have ever seen in the local game. Some of the partnerships she has been able to secure include deals with Hollard, Nike, Medshield, ProTours and Toyota.

Despite the team having struggled off the pitch in the last few years, their support base is still by far the biggest in the country with many of them being women. In deed women are a major focus for the club and Jessica in particular.

In 2019, she was part of the Women’s Football Strategy Taskforce Workshop in Egypt which saw 25 of the brightest minds in women's football from 17 countries converging to plot out a path for the growth of women's football on the continent.

The last @KaizerChiefs director is largely unknown to some but he is arguably just as influential as Mr Khoza and Jessica. Abdool Hamid Muhammad is the 72 year old Amakhosi financial director who hails from Brits in the North West.

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Not much is known of the man as he keeps a very low profile but I do know that he has always been into sport and could have been an outstanding international cricketer were it not for the apartheid laws of the day preventing him from representing South Africa

He's been with Chiefs since 1983 and is one of the oldest serving members of the club. Mr Muhammad is by far the most prolific businessman of the lot. He is registered as a director of no less than 55 companies with the oldest being registered way back in 1965.

His business interests are vast and some of the companies he is involved in include Uppercrust Bakery And Confectionery, Infrasec Technology, Batho Pele Investments, Roto Pumps, Safaaz Investments and M1 Latex Products.

He is also a former director of Safaaz investments which is a successful asset management company out of Rosebank in Johannesburg. According to DNB, Safaaz was registered in 1989 and has roughly 17 employees with annual turnover of roughly $2.5 million

To wrap up my reviews I always speak to the social impact. Chiefs has the biggest and most organised social responsibility program I have come across thus far. Every year the Fans Player of the Year donates up to R25000 to a charity as part of the CSI element of their prize.

Over the years, the Club has been supporting soccer tournaments and small teams in the communities through the donation of soccer kit. Recently, kit was donated to Afrika Tikkum, an NPO that was formed in 1994, with a vision to alleviate poverty.

They currently operate in 6 townships across Gauteng and the Western Cape delivering their Cradle to Career model. The Kaizer Chiefs Foundation has donated R1 million to the Gift Of The Givers as part of their programme of collaborations to accelerate positive impact.

' @KaizerChiefs have always been led by visionaries and have underpinned their success on excellent business principles. The board of directors is full of trailblazers in their fields of expertise and they have built a global giant on the sporting scene.

The blemish regarding the failed stadium build surely hurts but if there is a club that can eventually do it, it will be Chiefs.

That concludes the #KnowYourOwner of @KaizerChiefs

#Amakhosi4Life #DStvPrem

Ps, this is the redacted version due to Twitter thread length details.

You can read the whole unedited thread on my website

https://www.cashnsport.com/post/know-your-owner-kaizer-chiefs