SA Football Museum might leave FNB

The SA Football Museum, which is actually an exhibition celebrating the country's legacy as a sporting host, is considering leaving its FNB Stadium base at the end of next month.

The calabash-styled football stadium may be iconic for South African sports fans, but being open for public tours only on Thursdays limits foot traffic to Freedom to Fanfare exhibition.

Tours must be pre-arranged because there are no full-time staff.

The lease comes up for renewal at the end of next month, says Pippa Freer, a director at the museum, a nonprofit organisation.

"This is a great opportunity to look at a more publicly accessible venue."

Freer, a former marketing manager of Orlando Pirates, was brought in to the museum when it was a close corporation with some murals in a building in Soweto.

It was changed into a nonprofit organisation in 2008 so it could apply for National Lottery Commission funding.

It also worked closely with, at the suggestion of the Gauteng Tourism Authority, the SA Sports and Arts Hall of Fame, the forebear of what now sits at the Sun City resort.

The initial plans behind the football museum were grand, envisaging a fully-fledged museum with a R100-million price tag, but this evolved into the legacy project.

The museum's first tranche of Lotto funding of R4.8-million arrived in early 2014, and about six months after receiving the second and final payment of R2.6-million in March last year, the exhibition opened its doors.

"There's no management and maintenance budget," says Freer, adding that she wants to change the name of the organisation. "Safa [the South African Football Association] should own the name South African Football Museum."

It's also a misnomer for the exhibition. "A museum is a much greater entity."

By comparison, the Springbok Experience Rugby Museum in Cape Town, which covers 800 square metres, cost R37-million for an average price tag of R46,250 a square metre.

About 3,000 people a month have been through its doors at the V&A Waterfront since opening in September 2013.

The football museum's exhibition, over 460 square metres, cost a tad over R16,000 a square metre.

The exhibition covers about 30 sports that have hosted events since 1994, from the big three of soccer, rugby and cricket to smaller codes like athletics, cycling and boxing.

There are plans to add to the exhibition, but these depend on securing extra funding.