Graeme Smith highlights SA20 contribution to South African economy

Cricket South Africa launched the T20 domestic league in 2023, intending to make it one of the most lucrative leagues in the world. 

Speaking to Rachel Makhura on Sports Wrap on Radio 2000, Smith said the SA20 has created a lot of jobs in South Africa.

"You operate between excitement and fear all the time, when you're putting on events of this magnitude, and we've worked extremely hard," said Smith.

"If I take up back three years, we set some big goals – we wanted to be the biggest league outside the Indian Premier League, which I think we've now done.

"We've impacted cricket in this country in a really positive way, and we've seen new audiences come to the games, we've revived the cricket fan.

"And also the economic impact is something we're extremely proud of – last season we created 8 500 jobs and brought R4 billion to the economy.

"And on top of that, you're bringing the standard of cricket to a level where we can hopefully see the Proteas go on and be even more successful than we've seen in the last year."

The former Proteas captain added they are working hard to get the league to be broadcast on SABC platforms so as to increase its accessibility to more South Africans.

"It's a very complex thing, these behind-the-scenes conversations, but there was definitely an effort made and unfortunately, with SABC, we just couldn't quote find a way to make it work from their side," he shared.

"Which was disappointing because we really wanted to bring more cricket to more people, but hopefully in time we'll find each other and find a way to make it work."

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