Over the twelve months to 31 July 2026, one South African news site published 700 articles tagged Bafana Bafana and 12 tagged Banyana Banyana — a ratio of 58 to 1. Seven of those twelve months carried no women's national-team article at all. The method was fixed before counting, and all 712 articles are published with dates and URLs so the figure can be re-derived.
By Noma Dora, Senior Regulatory & Sports Journalist · Published · Last updated
More than four years covering sport for the regional South African press.
The method matters more than the number here, so it is fixed in advance and published in full below. Every one of the 712 articles counted is in the downloadable data, with its date and its URL, so the count can be re-derived rather than believed.
Over the twelve months to 31 July 2026, one South African news site published 700 articles tagged Bafana Bafana and 12 tagged Banyana Banyana. That is 58 to 1. The women's national team accounted for 1.7% of the two teams' combined coverage.
Seven of those twelve months carried no Banyana Banyana article at all. The median month produced 44 articles about the men's team and zero about the women's.
| Month | Bafana Bafana | Banyana Banyana |
|---|---|---|
| Aug 2025 | 6 | 0 |
| Sep 2025 | 35 | 0 |
| Oct 2025 | 65 | 0 |
| Nov 2025 | 39 | 0 |
| Dec 2025 | 98 | 0 |
| Jan 2026 | 30 | 0 |
| Feb 2026 | 9 | 1 |
| Mar 2026 | 62 | 1 |
| Apr 2026 | 25 | 1 |
| May 2026 | 73 | 0 |
| Jun 2026 | 209 | 1 |
| Jul 2026 | 49 | 8 |
| Total | 700 | 12 |
The obvious criticism is that this window is loaded. It contains a men's World Cup and a men's Africa Cup of Nations, and June 2026 alone produced 209 men's articles. Of course the ratio is extreme.
So here is the same count with the World Cup month removed entirely: 491 to 11. A ratio of 44.6 to 1.
Taking out the single biggest month of men's football in sixteen years moves the ratio from 58:1 to 45:1. The gap is not a tournament artefact. It is the baseline.
A second way to see the same thing, and the one that struck us hardest. The 102 most recent articles under the men's tag cover five weeks. The 102 most recent articles under the women's tag reach back to 7 August 2023 — very nearly three years. The same archive, the same site, the same tagging system.
This is a small, single-outlet measurement, and it is only worth anything if you can repeat it. So:
Outlet. thesouthafrican.com — a general South African news site, not a football specialist, which maintains a dated, publicly paginated tag archive for both national teams. It was chosen because it exposes the archive, not because of what the archive contains; we did not look at the counts before selecting it.
Tags. The site's own topic labels, /tag/bafana-bafana/ and /tag/banyana-banyana/. Not our keyword guesses, and not a site search. Using the outlet's own labels for both teams is what makes the two counts comparable.
Window. 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026 inclusive — the twelve complete months before publication. Fixed before counting.
Counting rule. One article equals one URL appearing under the tag, counted once. An article counts if the date the archive prints on its card falls inside the window. A card without a printed date is skipped rather than paired with a neighbour's date.
Collection. Each tag archive was walked page by page until the oldest article on a page fell before the start of the window, so no in-window article can have been missed by stopping early. The men's archive needed eight pages; the women's archive reached past the window start on the first.
Output. All 712 in-window articles are published with date and URL. If a single one is miscounted, it is visible.
It does not show that South African media publish 58 times more men's football coverage than women's. It shows that one outlet's tag archive does, over one twelve-month window. A second outlet could differ substantially, and a specialist football title almost certainly would. We have not measured the SABC, News24, IOL, SowetanLIVE or Soccer Laduma — several of which do not expose an archive that can be counted this way, which is itself part of why this measurement is rarer than it should be.
It does not measure prominence. A 90-word transfer note and a 2,000-word tournament analysis count the same. It does not measure page position, homepage placement, video, social output or broadcast minutes.
It is sensitive to tagging discipline. An article about Banyana Banyana that an editor did not tag banyana-banyana is invisible to this count, and the same is true in the other direction. The check on that is the men's tag, where 700 articles in twelve months indicates the tag is applied routinely rather than occasionally.
The comparison is national team to national team. It says nothing about club football coverage in either direction.
What it does show, on its own terms and with the arithmetic attached, is that at this outlet the women's national team is not covered a little less than the men's. In seven months of twelve it was not covered at all.
Because the alternative was not publishing anything. A multi-outlet study is the right study, and it needs archives that can be counted — which most South African news sites do not expose, and which the ones behind a paywall or a JavaScript feed actively prevent.
If you run a South African newsroom and want your outlet in the next version of this table, the requirement is small: a dated, paginated topic archive for both teams. We will count it the same way, publish the raw rows, and send you the result before it goes up.
How much media coverage does Banyana Banyana get compared with Bafana Bafana? At the outlet measured here, 12 articles against 700 over the twelve months to 31 July 2026 — a ratio of 58 to 1, with the women's team accounting for 1.7% of the two teams' combined coverage.
Isn't that just because of the men's World Cup? No. Removing June 2026 — the World Cup month, and the single largest month of men's coverage in the window — changes the ratio from 58:1 to 44.6:1. The gap is the baseline, not the tournament.
How many months had no Banyana Banyana coverage at all? Seven of twelve: August, September, October, November and December 2025, and January and May 2026.
Which month was best for women's coverage? July 2026, with 8 articles — two-thirds of the year's total in a single month.
Is this a study of South African media as a whole? No, and it is not presented as one. It is one outlet, one twelve-month window, counted from that outlet's own tag archives, with every counted article published so the figure can be checked. A multi-outlet version needs archives that can be counted, and most South African news sites do not expose one.
Can I check these numbers? Yes — that is the point. Both CSVs below list every article counted, with its date and URL, plus the monthly totals. The method section states the outlet, the tags, the window and the counting rule so the whole thing can be re-run.
Period covered: 1 August 2025 to 31 July 2026 inclusive — the twelve complete calendar months before publication. The window was fixed before any counting began.
Every figure on this page is in the files below, so you can check the arithmetic yourself. Released under CC BY 4.0 — free to reuse, including commercially, with attribution.
Journalists and researchers are welcome to use this data. Please credit Bet AFR and link to this page — that link is the only thing we ask for in return.
Bet AFR, "The Banyana Banyana coverage gap — 700 articles to 12 in twelve months", last updated 1 August 2026. https://betafr.co.za/statistics/banyana-coverage-gap
Licensed CC BY 4.0 (licence terms). Spotted an error, or have a better source? Tell us — corrections are published with the date they were made.
The men's national team this coverage is measured against is the subject of our overseas-based players, squad age profile and World Cup minutes pages. For another record that simply is not published, see PSL attendance.