Communiqué 67: South Africa’s biggest football club is building a media engine
Kaizer Chiefs is partnering with Gresham Media Group, one of Africa’s most successful media companies, to build a direct-to-consumer media engine driven by music.
1. The heat of the moment
On Sunday, April 13, in a match that encapsulated the raw emotion and unpredictability of South African football, Kaizer Chiefs, the country’s most popular football club, overturned a 1-0 deficit to beat Mamelodi Sundowns 2-1 at the packed FNB Stadium. This victory secured Kaizer Chiefs’ place in the Nedbank Cup final. The match saw a 57th-minute equalizer from 19-year-old forward Wandile Duba, followed by a clinical 89th-minute winner from substitute Ashley Du Preez, which sent Chiefs’ 16 million+ supporters into euphoric celebrations.
Less than 24 hours later, celebrations shifted from the pitch and the streets of Soweto to the airwaves on Kaizer Chiefs Radio, the club’s new digital radio platform launched earlier this year in partnership with Gresham Media Group, a Johannesburg-based media and entertainment company operating at the intersection of sports and music.
Monday’s 2 PM broadcast featured commentary on standout performances and analysis of the strategic decisions of the Chiefs’ technical team that propelled them to the final. It was repeated twice that evening, with additional slots the next day for those who missed the earlier broadcast.
Traditional sports coverage in South Africa has long leaned on third-party media outlets, but Kaizer Chiefs’ partnership with Gresham Media Group reflects a shift in how major sports clubs think about audience ownership and content monetization. The digital radio station, accessible via the club’s official website, has grown rapidly since launch, reaching over a million listens within its first three months. Its blend of matchday coverage, player interviews, music programming, and lifestyle content designed to keep fans engaged beyond the 90 minutes of play could be the future of sports media in Africa.
2. Records, royalties, and radio goals
Two years after Kaizer Chiefs was founded in 1970, David Gresham, a young musician who gained fame as South Africa’s first television DJ, established his record label, David Gresham Records. In the early days, the label made radio jingles for extra revenue. But things took off when Gresham signed Sean Rennie, a rising talent whose song I’ll Walk With You became an unexpected hit, climbing into South Africa’s Top 10 charts in the mid-1970s. The song’s success not only put Rennie in the spotlight but also introduced Gresham Records, now one of the subsidiaries of the larger Gresham Music Group, as a serious player in the country’s music industry. Soon, other artists began flocking to the label, drawn by its growing reputation.
But it was the company’s early experience producing radio jingles that laid the foundation for its most lucrative business: music licensing and royalties. Having crafted countless jingles for brands and broadcasters, Gresham Records had developed a deep understanding of publishing rights and royalty distribution, especially for music played on the radio. And it leveraged that experience for its artists, ensuring they could receive payments whenever their music was played on the radio or TV. This expertise allowed the company to dominate music licensing in Africa.
Eventually, Gresham expanded internationally, securing licensing agreements with major global rights holders, including Ultimate Music and the Society of European Stage Authors and Composers (SESAC). In 2020, Gresham signed deals with SESAC, The Harry Fox Agency, Mint Digital Services, and Swiss agency SUISA Digital Licensing to manage and collect the royalties earned in Africa for their artist portfolios. This deal expanded its catalog to over one million songs, representing global superstars such as Beyoncé, 50 Cent, Alicia Keys, Justin Timberlake, and Bob Dylan.
Also, through its subsidiary Gresham Media, it collects royalties on background music played in gyms, shopping malls, hotels, and restaurants. But it was in Studio 88, one of South Africa’s largest sports clothing, footwear, and accessories stores and an official retail partner for Kaizer Chiefs, that Gresham spotted the opportunity for a club-owned radio station. Gresham noticed that the customers were engaged with the music played in Studio 88 stores and realized there was an opportunity to work with a bigger, dedicated sports fan base.
“We did a deal with Studio 88 to create a music playlist that wasn't only playing in store, but that customers could also stream. On that model, knowing in South Africa and the rest of Africa football is the number one sport, we realized there's a massive opportunity to work with football clubs and other bigger sports teams,” George Dearnaley, Gresham Music Group’s head of football, told Communiqué.
Gresham Group considered sports like cricket and rugby, which have a massive following in South Africa, before eventually settling on football with Kaizer Chiefs, which has a fan base of over 16 million in South Africa.
Gresham Group tapped George Dearnaley, a former Bafana Bafana striker who had become a media executive post-retirement, to help develop the radio concept. Dearnaley had launched Kick Off magazine, one of the country's most influential football publications, and had managed Media24’s coverage of the 2010 FIFA World Cup hosted in South Africa. After almost a year of negotiations with Kaizer Chiefs, the platform launched quietly in December 2023.
At first, the platform only featured music playlists curated from top hits across South Africa's 11 official language stations, deliberately reflecting Kaizer Chiefs' nationwide appeal. Initial listener numbers remained modest, reaching only 40,000 by the end of January. When Kaizer Chiefs officially announced the station on March 3 this year, sharing it with their 2.5 million-member WhatsApp group and over 4.5 million Facebook followers, listenership exploded to 850,000 that month alone.
Now, the station has added more content to its lineup, including two weekly pre-recorded football shows featuring former Bafana Bafana and Chiefs players as analysts, along with club statistician Yusuf Mohamed. The Monday review show breaks down weekend matches (like the dramatic Nedbank Cup semifinal victory over Sundowns), while Thursday's preview show builds anticipation for upcoming fixtures. There are plans to add more shows featuring player interviews, lifestyle content, and live coverage of the matches. Gresham Group intends to replicate its success with other clubs and sports across Africa.
3. When football teams go Hollywood
Sports and media have always gone hand in hand in a symbiotic relationship that has sports teams creating content for media properties, while those properties, in turn, generate revenue for the teams. But in the late 1990s, English football clubs began to recognize the commercial opportunity in owning the distribution of original content created by their teams. In 1997, Middlesbrough became the first club to launch a TV channel. But the most successful club-owned media property is Manchester United’s MUTV, which launched a year later.
MUTV provides fans with exclusive access to the club’s activities, including full match replays, highlights, post-match shows, and behind-the-scenes content. This launch coincided with a period of great success for Manchester United, notably the treble-winning 1998–1999 season. Over the years, MUTV has chronicled every major on-field triumph and off-field story, making it an important avenue for maintaining fan engagement worldwide.
In 2017, MUTV began to move away from traditional television to embrace digital platforms. The launch of the MUTV app and availability on connected TV have made the channel accessible to a broader international audience. Much like Kaizer Chiefs’ partnership with Gresham Group, MUTV forged strategic alliances, such as its deal with Sina Sports in China, to deliver localized content and penetrate key international markets.
MUTV is also a significant part of Manchester United’s commercial strategy. In 2024, it helped the club rake in over £221 million in broadcasting revenue. This income supports the club’s operations, including player acquisitions and salaries. Other clubs, including Man City and Arsenal, have followed in launching their own media properties across different platforms and formats. Most recently, in 2020, Barcelona launched a new media property, Barça Media, to oversee the club’s digital and audiovisual production efforts. The new company was valued at $1 billion at launch.
This playbook has been extremely successful for European clubs. Now, one of Africa's largest and most successful clubs is developing its own media property in partnership with Africa’s largest music licensing company, starting first with a club-owned radio station. This model could become a blueprint for other African clubs looking to evolve beyond just sports operations to actual media brands.
Kaizer Chiefs has set an example, betting on content and community. How much will it pay off?