The Backroom Staff - Sponsorship Coordinator: Indira Sofia Albuquerque

Sponsorship Coordinator: Indira Sofia Albuquerque

Growing the women's game sportingly and commercially

Sports gambling has never been bigger - and it’s only expected to keep growing, as the world’s biggest sport, football has seen an amazing influx of betting money, most often in the form of sponsorships for clubs, leagues and broadcasts of all kinds.

This spike in investment is without a doubt controversial (look no further than recent NBA and MLB scandals rocking American sports in the last month) - but for some clubs and competitions, these sponsorship are one of the financial lifelines keeping them afloat.

In this interview, Indira shares her experiences from her playing career at JVW - one of South Africa’s most important women’s clubs - to organizing the biggest girls’ league in the country, and her work across the commercial side of the game - including, at Hollywoodbets. Today, Indira is a key figure in the growth of women’s football in South Africa and around the continent.

Indira’s insight into sponsorship - and the often complex role of gambling companies in modern football - offers a nuanced perspective on the role of money, visibility, and development in today’s game.

The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for grammar and clarity. 

Read on thebackroomstaff.com 

[ Background ]

I was born in Angola and came to South Africa when I was 3 and a bit. My dad was a medical doctor who came to continue his studies here, and then he brought all of us over. I think moving to South Africa, I was very quiet and very shy. I always felt that I never quite fit in. Being from Angola, I didn’t speak the South African languages, and there was a bit of a disconnect for me growing up.

In primary school, I started playing sports, and that’s where I started communicating with people, they would notice me and talk to me because I was really good! I was very sporty, I played tennis, hockey, and did athletics.

I used to watch football on TV with my dad, the South African football culture is really big for men's football. But women’s football was not big at all, and a lot of schools didn’t have it. I think I was 16 when I first kicked a football! When I started playing, my dad was kind of against it, so I hid it from him for a couple of years until I got to varsity. It was crazy.

From high school, I got scouted to join a club - a new club that was created by the then-captain of the South African women’s national team. Of course, there was a time when I wanted to play professionally. I wanted to represent a national team, whether it be South Africa or Angola, but every time that conversation came up, something happened, I either got injured or the coach changed and it just never happened. I had to make peace with that.

From there, I got really involved in the administration part of the club. I was managing the project as a whole and also running one of the biggest high school leagues for girls in the country. FIFA even did an article about it because it was the biggest high school league on the continent at that time.

So, my playing experience and being involved like this really highlighted all the injustices for women in the sport and really motivated me to stay involved and try to find ways to raise awareness and try to commercialize it. That’s been my plight since then!

[ The club, JVW - founded by Janine van Wyk, seems like an interesting club - you must have joined very early on? ]

Yeah, I was actually part of the first cohort that started at the club in 2011. I think for Janine, she obviously experienced a lot of places she couldn’t play as a female footballer and she’d always find herself playing with boys. I think that's the story of the majority of legends in the game, they play with boys, they play in boys' academies, and then they reach an age they have to leave, and where do they go?

She partnered with a business partner, Lauren Duncan, and they started a women’s club in 2011. At the time, the highest league for women’s football was called the Sasol League. It wasn't professional, it was provincial, and the provincial winners would play against each other in a national championship.

We started in a district league under the Sasol League before she was able to buy a license for the Sasol League, and we moved up. It was tough in the beginning because, as much as women’s football wasn’t as developed, there were still strong contenders who’d been playing for a long time and teams that had partnered with corporates and found ways to give stipends to players - and the best players would flock to these teams because at least they’d be getting something.

Eventually, in 2021, a new corporate came on the block and created a new league - the Hollywoodbets Super League - which became the national league. JVW won promotion in the second season and qualified for the top league.

[ You saw some of these big changes as a player and later on the admin side at JVW, how are things different for women’s football in South Africa now? ]

There's still a lot to be done in women's football in the country. But since I've been playing, there have been a lot more clubs starting under 15 and under 17 teams for girls. There’s been a bigger push towards it and there are now competitions for these age groups. For example, Engen, a petroleum company and Volkswagen, the car company, both sponsor different youth competitions. So, there’s more emphasis in creating platforms and youth competitions for girls, which also forces teams to look into building a development structure, not just a senior team.

Another thing, when I was still playing for JVW in the Sasol League, there was not a lot of visibility in terms of broadcasting - we weren't seen. Only the national final would be aired on the national broadcast on TV, and that's one game out of 400 and something throughout the year! Now with the Hollywoodbets Super League, there's one or two fixtures a week that are broadcast and they're starting to tap into the streaming side too - the Sasol League also streams their games now.

More coaches are getting qualified as well, and I think that’s really important. There’s a lot more awareness around how to coach female footballers and more coaches are becoming aware of the differences between coaching a male team and a female team and are upskilling themselves.

So, there have been some small, incremental changes. I wish it could be a lot faster and a lot more, but we’re getting there…

[ Do the big, traditionally ‘men’s’ football clubs have women’s teams or girls’ academies by now? ]

It's like pulling teeth, honestly. The only male team that has had women's teams for the longest time is Mamelodi Sundowns, they are number one. We had a team, Bloemfontein Celtic, they were a big team with a rich history who had a women’s team, but unfortunately, they had to sell their status. Newly on the block, there’s a team called TS Galaxy, which established a women’s team that’s just a couple of years old. And then in Cape Town, we have Stellenbosch, who also have a women’s team.

But it’s in drips and drabs. I think it really depends on who’s part of management - if no one in ExCo or management is pushing for women’s football, there’s not going to be any women’s teams in the club. Even though CAF - the Confederation of African Football - have mandated clubs that take part in CAF competitions to have a women’s counterpart, it’s very vague and undefined. A lot of teams are just finding women’s teams that already exist and just sharing some equipment and that’s their ‘job done’ and meeting the requirements.

[ You eventually left JVW for Hollywoodbets, where you focused on football sponsorships - what kind of responsibilities did you have in this role? ]

When I joined, my main project was to look after the Hollywoodbets Super League. I come from a very strong women's football background in the country, and was responsible for coordinating the league and ensuring that, from a competition and a brand point of view, everything was sound. I was, obviously, working together with the South African Football Association and especially with the broadcasting - and making sure Hollywoodbets was viewed in a positive light and all the contractual obligations were met and so on.

In the broader sponsorships team, everybody gets allocated a different sporting code in the country. I was working with football, of course, and had to look after all the football projects.

Alongside the Hollywoodbets Super League, we also had a partnership with La Liga, where we were trying to find ways to leverage our brand with them. For example, there was a time when we had the individual award winners and were able to give them a ‘La Liga experience’ and have them train with one of the teams and things like that. I think from La Liga’s point of view, they really wanted to entrench with a South African corporate that can help them increase their visibility here because, although everyone knows Barcelona and Real Madrid, that’s about where it ends in terms of the league’s popularity or recognition.

We did a lot of CSI work as well. We’d get hundreds of proposals every month and have to go through and see which makes sense to get involved in. For example, we had a partnership with the AmaZulu Community Trust. AmaZulu is a men's football club in the country, and they have a foundation where we'd partner to run developmental tournaments.

We also had a big partnership with Brentford. It was such a big project that different departments were allocated to it. My side was to try and leverage the brand in South Africa - which was pretty difficult because again, with the Premier League, we know the big teams - Arsenal, Chelsea, Man City, Man United, Liverpool - but Brentford is still quite new and lesser known. We tried to find ways to cross-pollinate and involved them with a whole lot of things, from horse racing to getting the girls from the Super League to go to Brentford and train with the women’s side.

[ How do you assess these different projects, and what does ‘success’ look like from Hollywoodbets’ perspective? ]

Hollywoodbets is obviously a betting company. One of their main focuses was acquisition and retention of their customers. So, every time we partnered up with, say, La Liga - we had La Liga betting on the platform, how do we make sure that people are betting on La Liga games? How can we push that?

We go back and check throughout the year and see what these numbers look like and how we are leveraging the brand with different stakeholders on digital, or social media, or other platforms. We do the same with the Hollywoodbets Super League. I think we were the first sportsbook in the country that created odds and betting for the women’s league.

[ How about these CSI proposals, are you also making proposals, or is it mostly people/organizations coming to you? ]

It’s mostly them coming to us. The amount of requests we got was pretty overwhelming so it didn’t really make sense for us to go out unless it was something that was a no-brainer to pursue.

Hollywoodbets was actually divided into two different arms - there was the sportsbook and the foundation. The foundation was the main driver for these CSI projects. We worked with a lot of underage teams, and I think, with any gambling or sportsbook, there’s a lot of red tape around it and understandably so.

We're seeing a lot now in the UK where they're really cutting down on sportsbooks as front of the jersey sponsors. Hollywoodbets is on Brentford’s jersey, for example, but I think next year, 2026, is the last year they will be allowed because all teams will have to remove betting companies as their front of shirt sponsor.

One of the things that I was focused on was women's football and especially a gap I found in coaching education. The association hosts coaching license courses every year and there are obviously different levels. We found that between the entry level, the D License, and the next step, the C License, there was a big drop in female coaches. Often, the barrier was the money you have to pay for the C License and this resulted in many of the coaches coaching women’s teams not having the license.

So, I partnered up with one of the regional football associations and we sponsored a whole class of women coaches - or coaches who coach women's football - to be able to get their C license. That’s why I always say, you need someone in an organization that knows the sport and is able to identify these things and do something about it. If I had not been in that position, I don’t think anyone would have done that because they wouldn't have seen the value.

By making coaching and coach education a number one priority, it means that the coaching will improve and, in turn, the product - the play - will look better on TV and benefit those who sponsor it.

[ Why has it become so common for betting companies to sponsor basically all aspects of football? ]

I think because there’s a direct link. The gambling company can speak directly to their customers. If you’re watching football and something pops up suggesting I make a bet, I might think, ‘I’m a passionate Premier League watcher, I know all the teams, I have an opportunity to make the right prediction and I could potentially win a lot of money, why not?’ So, it sounds like easy money to a lot of people without understanding that it’s not as easy as it sounds!

And in some places, gambling on sports is already part of the culture - in South Africa, betting on horse racing is huge, for example. Then, they find ways to make it more exciting, with fantasy leagues and whatever, and you feel like you are part of the league and keep people involved and engaged.

So, they have a big upper hand because they can speak directly to their customers. Unless it’s regulated, I think it will just continue. In the past year, I think we’ve seen 5 new big betting companies pop up in South Africa alone.

[ You mentioned this move by the Premier League planning to ‘ban’ betting sponsors on the shirt - do you think this is the start of this increased regulation that will follow in other countries/leagues or, in, say, 10 years, will betting companies still dominate football sponsorship in the same way? ]

Look, it'll take some time. If we look at the European landscape, it took some time for alcohol beverage companies to come off the front of the jersey. It was over a span of several years. I think we’re in the area now where this will start to happen with betting companies.

It’s a long conversation because, at the end of the day, it financially impacts those teams. It’s possible those teams won’t get a sponsor willing to pay as much as the betting company, and this will impact operations, the players they are able to get, the quality of football they’re playing, perhaps relegation.

So, it’s a serious financial concern as well. Here in South Africa, or let’s say Africa, I think it’s going to take a while, because we are only ‘catching up’ in terms of betting sponsors. Last year, for the very first time, the professional men’s league became sponsored by Betway, for example.

I think another reason betting operators have boomed in the last couple of years is that during COVID, when everything was closed down, the only thing people had access to was their cell phone. At the time, casino games were not allowed on betting platforms, but the regulation changed, and people no longer needed to go to a casino and had gambling in the palm of their hands all the time.

[ You’re no longer at Hollywoodbets and have a new role at Advent Sports Entertainment and Media (ASEM), can you tell me about your role there? ]

My transition from where I was to where I am now it’s night and day. I left Hollywoodbets for health reasons. I think I just needed to look after myself a little bit better because of how fast things were going and I was in a different province and away from friends and family. I needed to slow down.

We’re an agency that looks after corporate sporting portfolios. For example, one of our biggest clients is First National Bank, one of the big banks in South Africa. They want to sponsor sporting teams and events, but don’t have the team to be able to look after and run everything. So, we do that on their behalf. Asem also works with Varsity Cup and Sports and runs the Varsity Rugby, Netball and Football competitions in South Africa.

Crazy enough, as I said, I’m an avid women’s football person, they’re very big on rugby, so I’m doing a lot of rugby now! They recently started sponsoring the Springboks, the rugby team.

Besides that, they do a lot of grassroots sports. They sponsor high school rugby tournaments in each region that get huge attendances - the culture of rugby in this country is insane! They’ve become so big now that streaming is involved - and other corporates are now getting involved too.

We have a couple of football programs that we do as well, but it’s not as big as rugby. We do a yearly program where we host training sessions in different regions and then have a national festival.

My work is to ensure that our client is being represented at its best and making sure that everything is correct from an agreement’s perspective. I also look after the off-site hospitality and the FNB Stadium, which they also sponsor, and a lot of events that are happening there.

So, I'm not heavily involved in football, but in my personal capacity, I'm doing as much as I can to stay involved in women's football. It’s also good to be able to learn from different sports, how rugby administration works, how the women’s rugby teams are struggling and so on.

[ How are you thinking about your future steps? Do you think you’ll be back in football in a more formal way? ]

I think, right now, I’m just trying to get my hands on anything I can with the capacity I have.

I’m part of a new non-profit that looks after women’s football. We're looking to help development teams in the communities that don’t get the support or attention they need and deserve. I also recently went to the WAFCON (Women’s Africa Cup of Nations) in Morocco, where I was one of the marketing venue officers.

So, I’ve seen projects in CAF, in South Africa, NPC projects, and I just feel like there’s so much to do, and as much as I can give, I will.

Ultimately, I would like to be part of a CAF cohort or a FIFA cohort that looks after women's development and how we can bridge the gap. We’ve seen the establishment of a top league for women’s football, but it’s not professional - women have to play and work at the same time. How can we make professional football a reality for women in this country? I think that is my utmost mandate and a personal goal of mine to try and change that narrative, to commercialize women’s sports in the country and be part of a bigger cohort of people finding solutions to put women’s football in Africa on the map.

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