Dr Irvin Khoza reveals how Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates saved the PSL - 'Compete for 90 minutes. Cooperate afterwards'

For three decades, the Premier Soccer League has stood as the gold standard for domestic football on the continent, but its path to prosperity was paved with significant financial risks taken by its most famous members.

Speaking on the league’s evolution, Khoza explained that the dominant positions of Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs were leveraged not for their own greed, but for the collective health of the South African top flight.

Khoza revealed the internal logic that guided the two giants, telling iDiski Times: "People don’t understand the sacrifices we made."

"Under the old system, whenever Pirates or Chiefs travelled, the home club often made more money than we did because our supporters filled stadiums everywhere.

"We could easily have protected that advantage. Instead, we decided clubs should keep their own gate takings and that broadcasting – not ticket sales – should become football’s main income stream."

The Chairman emphasized that being a market leader carries a unique weight of responsibility toward the competition as a whole.

"That was a huge sacrifice," Khoza admitted when reflecting on the decision to decentralize gate receipts.

"But we believed that if you’re the market leader, as we both were due to our clubs, you have a responsibility to strengthen the market.

"That’s where our philosophy came from. Compete for 90 minutes. Cooperate afterwards," he said.

Beyond the restructuring of revenue streams, the league faced existential threats that required even more drastic measures, including the controversial decision to reduce the number of participating teams.

Khoza clarified that the move to trim the division from 18 clubs down to 16 was born out of necessity rather than a desire to exclude teams.

The league was navigating a period of extreme financial instability where the entire infrastructure of professional football in the country was at risk of a total collapse if costs were not immediately reined in.

The "Iron Duke" shared harrowing details of how close the league came to the brink, noting that the two Soweto giants literally went without pay to keep their rivals afloat.

"Without a doubt, it was. We had to do it for austerity measures. And during that period, Pirates and Chiefs even went unpaid for two months.

"We said the other clubs must receive their money first because if they collapsed, the league collapsed.

"Those are the sacrifices people never see," he concluded.

This period of hardship ultimately stabilized the PSL, turning it into the commercial powerhouse it is today.

Khoza believes that the greatest legacy of the last 30 years is not found in the trophy cabinet or the lucrative TV deals, but in the institutional strength of the league itself.

The willingness of its biggest brands to suffer short-term losses for long-term stability remains a cornerstone of the league's history.

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