What the Dispute Means for South African Runners
Athletics South Africa, Western Province Athletics and the Cape Town Marathon organisers are currently arguing about who controls what. The race is booked on the ASA fixtures list for 22-23 May 2027, and it's chasing membership of the Abbott World Marathon Majors - a push that raises the bar on everything from elite fields to broadcast production. At the same time, CTM and ASA are fighting over who owns the commercial rights to the broadcast. WPA, meanwhile, is the provincial body that's been tied to the race for years and is now caught somewhere in the middle.
So what does any of this mean for the person actually pinning on a race number?
Where the fight started
Broadcasting is the biggest flashpoint. ASA has traditionally controlled broadcast rights for South Africa's major athletics events, and it's not a small line item: the federation's audited 2024 figures show broadcast rights brought in R12.68 million, close to 40% of its R31.9 million total revenue. In April 2026, ASA signed a three-year deal with the SABC covering its events, including the major road races and national championships.
Cape Town Marathon is pushing back on that. Race director Clark Gardner says the event spends more than R12 million a year on its elite field and prize money alone, and that the organisers carrying that cost and risk should have more say over how the broadcast is produced and sold. His argument, essentially: if we're building this into a genuine international marathon, we need control over the production quality, the international distribution, the timing systems - the whole package. He says the current ASA arrangement doesn't give them that.
ASA's acting CEO Terrence Magogodela sees it differently. His position is that ASA's standing with World Athletics is what gives the race its legitimacy in the first place - that the federation's involvement isn't overhead, it's part of what makes the event count internationally.
Strip away the TV talk and it's really a fight over who controls the money a major race generates.
WPA is stuck in the middle
Western Province Athletics is the provincial federation for the Western Cape, sitting inside the ASA structure, and it's had a long relationship with the Cape Town Marathon. By most reporting, the event grew out of an arrangement between WPA and ASEM, a company involved in developing and managing the race, an agreement that was later extended out to 2051.
ASA has questioned that timeline. Its acting CEO has reportedly raised concerns about rights being locked up for that long, while Gardner has defended it on the grounds that a race can't justify the investment needed to chase World Marathon Majors status without long-term certainty.
Three different organisations, three different sets of interests and they overlap just enough to cause problems.
Why is a federation involved in a road race at all?
It's a fair question. If a company can get municipal approval, close the roads and put on the event, why does a national federation need to be in the picture?
Because "putting on a race" and "having that race recognised within organised athletics" are two different things. ASA is South Africa's federation, affiliated to World Athletics, and provincial bodies like WPA sit underneath it. That structure is what governs competition rules, technical officials, athlete licensing, records, rankings, qualifying standards and sanctioning. WPA's own published information for athletes already blends its own qualifying standards with ASA's, the two are meant to work together, not in isolation.
That question of authority is exactly what's blown up around Comrades this year.
The Comrades situation makes this harder to ignore
It's a separate dispute, but the same fault line. In August 2026, members of the Comrades Marathon Association voted against re-affiliating with KwaZulu-Natal Athletics, 873 votes to 229 in the first round, then 694 to 338 against re-affiliation in a second vote. ASA responded by announcing that the 2027 Comrades Marathon won't be sanctioned, saying the organisers hadn't met the governance requirements of ASA, KZN Athletics and World Athletics.
One of the most famous road races on the planet, and its own federation won't sanction it. That's the backdrop the Cape Town Marathon dispute is playing out against.
And then there's the Competition Tribunal
CTM first went to the Competition Commission over ASA's grip on broadcast rights. When that didn't go anywhere, they escalated to the Competition Tribunal, the question now being whether ASA's control of those rights holds up under competition law.
The commercial logic isn't complicated. CTM builds the course, attracts the elite athletes, lines up the sponsors, runs the medical services, coordinates with the municipality, they make the product. Whether another organisation should automatically own the broadcast rights to that product is a genuinely open legal question, and one best left to the Tribunal rather than Twitter.
Is the race actually at risk?
No sign of that. The 2027 fixtures still have CTM on the calendar for 22–23 May, and the 2026 race, the 42.2km - is already on the Western Province road-running calendar for 24 May. Nobody's cancelling anything.
What's actually uncertain is everything around the race: who supplies the technical officials, how results get recognised, who issues licences, what happens to records, how elite athletes get classified, who has the authority to sanction the event, who owns the broadcast. Those questions matter far more to a competitive athlete than to someone chasing their first finisher's medal.
Where clubs fit in
South African road running runs on club culture; training groups, coaching, lifts to races, support stations, the whole social infrastructure. Clubs are also the thread connecting individual athletes to the provincial federation.
Picture someone who's trained for six months to hit a seeded-start qualifying time. If the race's standards, WPA's standards and ASA's standards start pulling in different directions, which one applies to them? Or someone chasing a national championship qualifying mark; if the race's status is being disputed, does their run even count?
Those aren't hypotheticals. They're the kind of thing that needs to be settled well before anyone's at the start line. Ideally runners get one set of rules, published clearly, from one process - not a legal dispute they have to interpret for themselves.
For elite athletes, the stakes are higher
A marathon time can shape selection, rankings, sponsorship, appearance fees, international opportunities. A 2:10 at a fully recognised marathon isn't worth the same as a 2:10 at an event whose status is up in the air, which is precisely why World Athletics recognition matters so much here — and why both sides are digging in. ASA wants to protect its role as the body that grants that recognition. CTM wants to operate like the international majors it's trying to join. Those positions sound like they're at war, but there's a workable middle: a race can run commercially independent of the federation while still meeting the technical requirements that keep it internationally recognised. Getting there just requires someone to actually draw that line.
Why broadcasting matters more than it sounds like it should
Most runners rank TV rights somewhere below the length of the toilet queue on race morning. But a major marathon is expensive to run; prize money, elite appearance fees, timing systems, medical coverage, road closures, production costs; and broadcast rights are a real revenue stream. Whoever controls them controls a meaningful chunk of the race's income.
Which raises questions nobody's fully answered yet: should that money fund national administration? Stay with the organiser to reinvest in the event? Go toward athlete development? Get shared with clubs and provinces? These deserve actual financial disclosure, not arguments fought out in headlines.
ASA has its own problems
None of this is happening in a vacuum. In March 2026, Parliament's Portfolio Committee on Sport, Arts and Culture recommended dissolving the ASA board, citing governance and fiduciary concerns, on top of complaints it had already heard about unpaid marathon prize money. World Athletics has been watching ASA's governance and finances closely too.
That doesn't automatically make ASA wrong about broadcast control. But when a federation argues it needs to protect athletics governance, it's fair to ask how well it's governing itself. And when a private organiser argues for more independence, it's fair to ask what that means for athlete protection and transparency. Neither side gets a pass here.
What to watch
The Tribunal case. However it lands, it'll shape how South African competition law treats federation control of broadcast rights, well beyond just Cape Town.
CTM's relationship with WPA. It looks strained right now, and WPA is still the provincial body athletes and clubs actually deal with day to day.
World Marathon Majors progress. CTM's push for Majors status is the pressure behind a lot of this, it's driving the argument for broadcast control.
How sanctioning gets communicated. Watch how future race information describes licensing, officials and results recognition; especially if you're a competitive runner.
Clubs. If this drags on, WPA-affiliated clubs will need clear guidance on how their athletes should navigate a privately organised major race, guidance that should come from the organisations involved, not from a WhatsApp group.
Should you actually worry about this?
Probably not, if you're just training for the race. Your mileage, your long runs, your nutrition, your pacing, none of that changes. The marathon is still 42.2km regardless of who owns the broadcast rights, and your legs genuinely do not care about any of this.
But if you're chasing a qualifying standard, an age-group championship, or building toward an elite career, the governance actually matters to you. Same for clubs trying to plan around it.
What needs to happen
ASA should spell out exactly what it provides to major races and where the broadcast revenue goes. CTM should be upfront about how its agreements with WPA actually work and who's responsible for what. WPA needs to hold its clubs and athletes together while this gets sorted. And the legal questions need to go through the Tribunal on their merits, not get decided by public pressure.
There's room to disagree on all of this. There's much less room for athletes to be left guessing whether their race result actually counts.
South African running has the talent to fill roads from Cape Town to Durban and back; elite marathoners chasing international standards, club runners chasing PBs, and thousands of people just trying to finish their first 42.2km before sunrise turns into midday heat. What they need is a system that just works: clear rules, reliable results, and decisions that don't leave them stuck between three organisations arguing over who's in charge.
Cape Town Marathon wants a global profile. ASA is responsible for the sport nationally. WPA answers to the clubs and athletes in its own province. There's space for all three to matter here; the real work now is agreeing where each one's authority starts and stops.
Until that's settled, South African runners will be watching this dispute almost as closely as they watch the clock. And this time, nothing gets decided at the finish line.
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