Online Reporter
Zimpapers Sports Hub
THE Premier Soccer League spent the week in rare company.
At the 2025 World Leagues Association convention in Athens, the Zimbabwean top-flight sat alongside some of football’s biggest competitions.
The gathering drew 48 professional leagues, including the English Premier League, LaLiga, Serie A, France’s LFP, the Danish League, Japan’s J1 League, Portugal’s Primeira Liga, Major League Soccer, South Africa’s PSL, Nigeria’s Premier League and Algeria’s Ligue 1.
Zimbabwe’s PSL have been part of the WLA since 2018, although many supporters at home still don’t know the league occupies these global spaces.
PSL CEO Rodwell Thabe says that kind of access matters.
“The ability to directly connect with other leagues, share ideas on various aspects of the operations in different countries including ideas on how to boost commercial revenues and participate in exchange programmes.
“By working together with other leagues the PSL benefits from shared WLA acquisitions and receives technical assistance on how to run professional football better.”
Athens centred on the issues shaping how leagues are run worldwide. Delegates tackled governance concerns, global and continental benchmarking, the sports data value chain, joint project opportunities, the international calendar, statutory matters and the state of football developments across different markets. It was an agenda that gave Zimbabwe a clear look at where the game is moving.
Thabe believes the impact will filter into local football. “Zim PSL may not get direct funding from WLA but the importance of this collaborative arrangement and employing proven strategies elsewhere whilst adapting them for our market will help the league improve in all these aspects.”
The next step, he says, is turning those lessons into action as the league sharpens both its technical and commercial operations.
“The WLA convention has been a fruitful business convention that will help the PSL to improve its operations whilst constantly benchmarking and sharing ideas with its counterparts in Africa and beyond.
We are focused on elevating the standards of professional football across Zimbabwe as we embark on the next phase of growth and commercial expansion for the league as such, high-level engagements are the step in the right direction in meeting the objectives of the league.”
For the PSL, the value of Athens stretches beyond showing up. It offered a chance to study proven systems, measure progress against global peers and rethink how Zimbabwe manages, governs and markets its domestic competition.
