CANAL+ Group extends PSL broadcast rights deal

French company CANAL+ Group on Wednesday confirmed the extension of its agreement with the National Soccer League (NSL) for the rights to broadcast the Premier Soccer League (PSL) live on SuperSport across Sub-Saharan Africa.

The deal was announced on the same day CANAL+ confirmed its listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE).

“The Premier Soccer League (PSL) is the preeminent football league in South Africa and is one of the great football institutions on the continent. The PSL’s Betway Premiership and domestic cup competitions (MTN8, Carling Knockout and Nedbank Cup), as well as the Motsepe Foundation Championship, continue to attract some of the largest and most engaged audiences across SuperSport’s channels on DStv. In South Africa, the SuperSport channels are supplied by Canal+ to the broadcast licence holder MultiChoice (Pty) (Ltd), which provides the DStv offering to subscribers. sport-newz.biz

“The extension reinforces the shared commitment of the PSL and CANAL+ to the continued growth, visibility and development of South African football. Through SuperSport’s production capabilities and distribution platforms, PSL competitions have reached millions of viewers across Sub-Saharan Africa, helping to showcase the quality, competitiveness and appeal of South African club football to audiences throughout the continent. The partnership will support ongoing investment in production, innovation, storytelling and fan engagement, ensuring that supporters continue to enjoy comprehensive coverage of the country’s premier football competitions,” read a statement from CANAL+.

Welcoming the extension, PSL chairman, Dr Irvin Khoza said: “Football institutions are built through consistency, responsible stewardship and strong relationships. Together, the PSL and SuperSport have worked to grow the game, strengthen our clubs and bring South African football to audiences across the continent. We are pleased that this partnership will continue, with CANAL+ sharing our commitment to the long-term growth and success of South African club football.”

David Mignot, CANAL+ Africa CEO, added: “The extension of our partnership with the PSL is an important moment for CANAL+ following our acquisition of MultiChoice Group last year. It underscores our commitment to invest in compelling local sports and entertainment content across Africa.

“The continued success of South African club football is reflected in one of the most competitive Betway Premiership seasons in recent memory, with the title only being decided on the final matchday. That level of competition, together with the growing strength of South African clubs, is a testament to the vision and leadership that has helped shape the PSL over many years, including the significant contribution made by Dr Irvin Khoza and Dr Kaizer Motaung, together with their able Executive Committee.

“Having operated on the African continent for more than three decades, we know the importance of football and means to viewers. Alongside our partners at the PSL, including its Board of Governors, we aim to continue to deliver the best local football viewing experience and to continue to innovate our product to the benefit of PSL fans across the continent.”

By the time the Free State Crinums walked off the court at Ellis Park Arena as the only unbeaten side in Division 1 of the 2026 Telkom Netball League, Karla Pretorius had already done the most surprising thing she could have done. She had shown up. Not as a veteran collecting a farewell season, but as a captain, a starter, and by most measures the most composed and commanding defender on the court.

She was thirty-six years old, a wife, a mother to a four-year-old, a qualified dietician, a high school director of netball, and a woman who had just returned from a year off. None of that, she will tell you, is a contradiction.

“There’s nobody that’s taken a break at thirty-five and returned at thirty-six, but that was my choice, and that’s what I’m going to do.”

TNL Free State Crinums Captain, Karla Pretorius

That choice, and the clarity with which she made it, is what makes Karla Pretorius one of the most instructive careers in South African women’s sport. She is not simply a great netball player. She is a case study in how to build a life, a brand, and a career in a sport that has not yet made it easy to do any of those three things.

The landscape when she started was almost unrecognisably different from the one she competes in today. As a semi-professional in her early years, the entire competitive calendar could be reduced to two tournaments: a week of junior netball and a week of senior netball. That was it. A full year of preparation for fourteen days of competition.

Coach Martha Mosoahle-Samm and Karla Pretorius on 2024 TNL Win: ‘On Another Level’

“You’re literally preparing yourself to play only two tournaments a year,” she said. “Where now, the opportunities are just so much more.”

Those opportunities expanded, for Pretorius, when she became one of the first South African women to cross into the fully professional Australian Super Netball competition with Sunshine Coast Lightning.

She saw, from the inside, what a commercially mature women’s sport ecosystem actually looks like: full-time professional contracts, high-performance infrastructure, meaningful broadcast exposure, and sponsors willing to commit at scale. She brought that perspective home.

In South Africa, the picture is more complicated. The Telkom Netball League has been a significant step forward, and Pretorius is open about how much that kind of committed title sponsorship means at the player level. The visibility, the infrastructure, the sense that the product is being taken seriously by partners with real commercial weight: all of it filters down onto the court.

Karla Pretorius: “Its Been An Honour to Wear the Lightning Dress”

But the honest assessment, as she gives it, is that the gap between domestic and international commercial conditions remains real, and the path to full-time professional netball in South Africa is not yet complete.

“In the netball landscape, there’s still a long way to go,” she said. “For you to do it professionally, you need to still go abroad.”

The personal sponsorship landscape, too, is tougher than it looks from the outside. Pretorius is routinely described as the most marketable netball player in South Africa, and by most measures, that assessment is accurate: a World Cup Player of the Tournament award, back-to-back Super Netball premierships, a record-breaking intercept count, and a public profile that has been built steadily over two decades.

And yet, she is frank about the structural barriers that women athletes face when they go looking for commercial partners.

“If you need to get a sponsorship from a car dealership, you’re going to have to ask five before they say yes,” she said. “But if it’s a male asking, they will still get on board. It’s still a massive struggle. It’s a reality.”

The way through that reality, as she has navigated it, is not to chase the marketing before earning the platform. Her advice to younger athletes is grounded and deliberate: put the performances in first, be a consistent and credible example, and let the commercial opportunities follow.

“You need to make sure that you put those performances in and be a good example out there for other people before you can really jump into that marketing side of it.”

The brand, in other words, is built on the court before it is built on a screen.

That philosophy extends to how she has managed her career’s shape. The decision to step away from playing at the end of 2024 and spend a year on the Crinums management and coaching side was not a retreat. It was a planned reset, taken with her family’s needs and her own long-term wellbeing in full view. She acknowledges it was a chance she was willing to take, knowing it might cost her a Proteas place. It was also, she says, one of the best decisions she has made.

When she returned to the playing roster for 2026, she was required to attend trials, the same as anyone else. That is not a humiliation but a standard, and she embraced it. On court, the coaching year paid immediate dividends.

Having spent twelve months watching the game from the other side of the technical bench, she returned with a different layer of understanding: How strategies are designed, how units are built, how pressure is applied. “Coaching has given me so much perspective,” she said. “I really feel it’s a point of difference for me now going back on court.”

The Crinums’ unbeaten Power Week campaign is partly a reflection of that point of difference. Pretorius speaks about the team in collective terms, crediting the high-performance systems at the University of the Free State and the CUT Maties, the coaching of Martha Mosoahle-Samm and Coach Ney, and the culture of a group that has learned to put the team before individual performance.

Telkom Netball League Semi-Final Lines Drawn as Power Week 2 Concludes the 2026 Group Stages

“Everybody executes their role so well and players put the team first,” she said. “We work so well as a team off court, on court, and we’re so focused on what we need to do within our units.” The goal is simple: Lift the trophy.

Off the court, her life is a deliberate construction. Motherhood, she will tell you, did not diminish her as an athlete. It recalibrated her. The hyper-scheduled, obsessively planned professional athlete gave way to someone more adaptive, more present, and in some ways more effective.

Karla Pretorius Named 2020 gsport Newsmaker of the Year

She learned to be kind to herself when training did not go to plan, to switch off once the session was done, and to find sharper intensity in fewer hours. The support network around her, she returns to this point repeatedly, is not incidental to her success. It is foundational.

Her role at Hoërskool Fichardtpark as Director of Netball means she is already doing, in a formal setting, what her career has always implied: showing younger women what is possible when you commit to the long game. The advice she gives to the girls she works with is the same advice she lives by. Enjoy what you do. Work hard. Have the right attitude. Do not put all your eggs in one basket. Know that everyone’s journey is different.

“Regardless of whether you make provincial teams at school or not,” she said, “it doesn’t have to define who you’re going to be going forward.”

Karla Pretorius did not follow a linear path to where she stands today. She studied while she played, worked while she competed, started a family without stopping, left the court and came back, and built a commercial identity in a landscape that made none of it straightforward. She is, in that sense, not just a great netball player. She is the argument for what women’s sport in this country can become when the right investment, the right platforms, and the right athletes come together in the same room.

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Main Photo Caption: Free State Crinums captain Karla Pretorius returned to the Telkom Netball League in 2026 as one of South Africa’s most decorated and experienced defenders, bringing her World Cup Player of the Tournament pedigree and seven seasons of Australian Super Netball experience back to the domestic game. Photo: Netball South Africa

Photo 2 Caption: A file photo of Karla Pretorius receiving the 2019 World Cup Player of the Tournament award, one among many precious milestones for the icon.

Photo 3 Caption: Crinums stalwart Pretorius credits the Telkom Netball League sponsorship with raising the standard of domestic netball in South Africa.

Photo 4 Caption: Pictured with the then Deputy Minister Sport, Arts and Culture, Nocawe Mafu, Pretorius was gsport’s first-ever Newsmaker of the Year, in 2020.

The post Karla Pretorius on Building a Brand, a Career, and a Life in Netball appeared first on gsport4girls.

NAIROBI, Kenya, June 3, 2026 – Kakamega Homeboyz head coach Patrick Odhiambo could be on his way out the exit door if his recent comments are anything to go by.

In the aftermath of their 1-1 stalemate against Kenya Police in the ultimate Football Kenya Federation (FKF) Premier League tie on Sunday, Odhiambo said he will take time to think about his future at Abana Beingo.

“It is something I need to sit down and think about deeply because, honestly, I have been disappointed this season. So many things went wrong, and they can’t continue that way,” Luwowo, as he is fondly referred to, said.

Absolving the club’s chair ‘Toto’ Shimanyula of any fault, Odhiambo revealed he has had to work under difficult circumstances, which have greatly disheartened him.

“I respect him so much for the support he has given me. Of all the clubs I have worked for, he has been the most supportive chair I have ever worked for. Many of these issues are beyond his control. For example, some of the goals being conceded on the pitch are very suspicious. I have also played football and some of the goals conceded bring up a lot of questions. Is it an issue of quality or something more to it?” he said.

The Western Kenya side finished sixth after garnering 49 points from 34 games.

It was a season that held so much promise but in the end fell just short, resulting in another trophyless outcome.

It is a stark contrast to 2023 when he guided Homeboyz to the domestic cup triumph, earning them a historic berth in the Caf Confederations Cup.

Odhiambo admits he is heartbroken at failing to repeat the success of three years ago.

“To be fair, we have not performed well this season because we are a team with so much potential. We could have performed so much better…up until the second half of the season we were competing for the title but we were affected by our off-pitch issues,” the former Gor Mahia assistant coach said.

The gaffer returned to Homeboyz in August last year, after losing his job at KCB FC, following a tough run of results at the bankers.

Given his reputation for working miracles with meagre resources — and keeping his teams in the top half of the log — Odhiambo will not be short of suitors should he choose to call time on his second stint at Kakamega.

The post Why KK Homeboyz coach could depart club after trophyless season appeared first on Capital Sports.

À quelques heures du match amical entre la France et la Côte d’Ivoire, Jules Koundé s’est présenté devant les médias aux côtés de Didier Deschamps. L’occasion pour le défenseur français d’évoquer plusieurs sujets, dont son avenir au FC Barcelone.

Avant cela, les Bleus ont un rendez-vous important à honorer. Ce jeudi à 19h10 GMT, la France affrontera la Côte d’Ivoire dans le cadre de sa préparation à la Coupe du monde. Invaincus depuis neuf rencontres, avec huit victoires et un match nul, les vice-champions du monde arrivent en confiance et comptent bien poursuivre leur série.

Koundé reste concentré sur les Bleus

Mais en conférence de presse, les questions ne concernaient pas uniquement la sélection française. L’avenir de Jules Koundé au FC Barcelone a également été évoqué. Pour le défenseur, pourtant, la situation est très claire. Sous contrat jusqu’en 2030 avec les Blaugrana, il ne semble pas envisager un départ dans un futur proche :

« J’ai un contrat jusqu’en 2030. Dans mon esprit, c’est assez clair. Mais quand on arrive en équipe de France, ça arrive après. »

Une déclaration qui a le mérite d’être limpide. Concentré sur ses objectifs avec les Bleus, Jules Koundé semble voir son avenir s’inscrire du côté de Barcelone, où il reste l’un des éléments incontournables du dispositif catalan.

The post FC Barcelone : Jules Koundé évoque son avenir avec les Blaugrana appeared first on AfricaFootUnited.

How was a South African tighthead prop not chosen as the No 3 in the United Rugby Championship 2025/26 season Elite XV? When you think of South African rugby’s biggest strength, it is with those wearing Nos 1 and Nos 3.

An Irishman, in Leinster’s Thomas Clarkson got the nod at No 3.

Madness.

Clarkson started eight of 11 matches in the URC and averaged 49 minutes a match. Leinster lost four of those 11 matches.

South African props

Not when you look at the prop options from within South Africa’s URC quartet of the Bulls, Lions, Sharks and Stormers.

Wilco Louw is the obvious standout for the Bulls.

Louw started 10 of 11 URC matches this season.

Then there is Neethling Fouche for the Stormers and Vincent Koch (12 matches) of the Sharks.

Fouche started 12 of 14 matches in the URC this season.

The Lions’ Asenathi Ntlabakanye was superb this season, but missed the last few matches after being suspended for taking weight loss medication approved by a doctor, but on the prohibited list for rugby players.

Ntlabakanye started 13 of 14 URC matches.

The Bulls, Stormers and Sharks scrum were comfortably the best three scrums in the competition this season.

Bulls

• Wilco Louw
• Francois Klopper
• Mornay Smith

Lions

• Asenathi Ntlabakanye

Sharks

• Vincent Koch

Stormers

• Neethling Fouché
• Zachary Porthen
• Sazi Sandi

*Frans Malherbe (Stormers) and Trevor Nyakane (Sharks) missed the URC with injury. Both are Springboks World Cup winners.

URC ELITE XV – 15 Quan Horn (Lions), 14 Werner Kok (Ulster), 13 Stafford McDowall (Glasgow Warriors), 12 Stuart McCloskey (Ulster), 11 Kyle Rowe (Glasgow Warriors), 10 Sacha Feinberg-Mngomezulu (Stormers), 9 Embrose Papier (Bulls), 8 Evan Roos (Stormers), 7 Ruan Venter (Lions), 6 Cian Prendergast (Connacht), 5 Cobus Wiese (Bulls), 4 Darragh Murray (Connacht), 3 Thomas Clarkson (Leinster), 2 Johan Grobbelaar (Bulls), 1 Ntuthuko Mchunu (Stormers).

Of the South African tightheads playing for overseas clubs, Thomas du Toit (Bath) and Carlü Sadie (Bordeaux) have been immense.

Sadie started in all eight of Bordeaux’s Investec Champions Cup matches. He is part of Springboks coach Rassie Erasmus’s national alignment camp.

Du Toit, who leaves Bath for South Africa’s Sharks, took three category wins at the club’s end of season awards.

Du Toit’s value to Bath and the Boks is his quality as a tighthead prop and loosehead prop.

South Africa’s loosehead prop stocks are as impressive with Sharks’ Ox Nche, Bulls’ Gerhardt Steenekamp and Stormers Ntuthuko Mchunu the leading trio in the country.