The Premier Soccer League and their title sponsors ABSA Bank on Thursday unveiled the trophy which the team winning the 2007-2008 ABSA Premiership title will get to display, in their trophy cabinet at their clubs headquarters for the next year.

Apart from the new trophy the PSL also made public the amount that the 2007 – 2008 Champions will get to pocket, eyebrows were raised when Happy Ntshingila of ABSA let it be known that the team crowned ABSA Premiership Champions will receive R10 million. In a landmark announcement for the PSL it sees the prize money for the winning team going up almost five times on the previous season.

ABSA who took over as the main sponsor of the Premier Soccer League late last year officially launched their sponsorship of the league on Thursday, at the eye of Africa atop the famous Johannesburg landmark the Carlton Centre. In all ABSA will be paying out a total of R 29.45 million rand in prize money to the 16 PSL teams, with the teams placing from 1-8 all receiving prize money in the million rand bracket.

Stiff competition

ABSA Group Marketing manager Happy Ntshingila believes that the added R10 million incentive for the winner will assist in helping to make the race to be champions a tight one. As he said “after this announcement all the teams will want to go out there and make sure they aim higher, the prize money is based on your position in the league. The higher you go the more money you will get and the winner will receive ten million rands which is a huge prize and who would not want to win that amount of cash”.

Good development

PSL CEO Kjitel Siem labelled the prize money being offered as historical and the team winning the league this season will have in one season won what would have taken the previous winners four seasons to accumulate as he said. “This is a historical day up to last year you had to win the league four times to get this amount of money, this injection is going to help the league grow and gain further momentum”. While the sponsorship by ABSA and the incentives to win the league are huge Siem believes that it is time to focus on working on the development of the talent side of the game as he further added. “We have invested in the commercial side of the game over the past few months, given the amount of money teams get now it is now time for direct investment into the product with all this money we must now start to focus on nurturing the talent side of the game which is critical for further growth of the sport”.

Man of the match

From the beginning of March ABSA will be introducing a man of the match award, which will be handed out at the end of every ABSA Premiership game till the end of the season. A panel of judges will also decide at the end of each month decided which of the man of the match award recipients will win The player of the month award, which comes with R10 000 in prize money. The man of the match winners will receive a special ABSA Premiership medal in recognition of their performance during a specified game.

Prize Money ABSA Premiership

1ST R10 Million


2nd R 5 Million


3rd R 3 Million


4th R 2 Million


5th R 1.5 Million


6th R 1.3 Million


7th R 1.1 Million


8th R 1 Million


9th R 750 000


10th R 700 000


11th R 650 000


12th R 600 000


13th R 550 000


14th R 500 000


15th R 450 000


16th R 400 000