The Bench SA: Elevating the Beautiful Game and Sharing Their Passion for Football on TikTok

Karlan Naidoo, Norika Naidoo, and Havana Chetty collaborated to start The Bench SA on a blue couch outside their parents’ home in 2021. Their goal? To reignite their own and other peoples’ passion for South African and African football. Their platform is aimed at creating fun, appealing, and relevant content to promote South African football, create community and educate newbies about African sports – with a view to elevating the game, always! In this interview, they share how they thrive on creating entertaining, relatable, and shareable content for their followers.


What sparked your initial interest in football and how did that lead to where you are now?

We don’t know life without football and our dad ignited our passion for the game by taking us to live games from an early age. From watching local football to European Premier Leagues and World Cups, it has always been a standard feature in our lives. Our interest in the game did not stop at being spectators, as we were both active football players for our school and club teams. These experiences set a strong foundation for the creation of The Bench SA. Our love of content creation led us to Morocco to watch Banyana Banyana win WAFCON 2022. This provided us with a platform to document their success from a fan’s perspective and really gave us confidence and belief in what we do with The Bench SA. The Bench SA has prioritised educating and creating a community of passionate football individuals and we only hope that our team can continue to improve, learn and grow within this landscape.


What are your thoughts on the growing popularity of women in football? Do you believe platforms like TikTok can help this cause and why?

It is great to see women’s football gain the recognition it deserves. Good football is good football, no matter who is playing the game. The rising popularity of women in football is great because it creates amazing female leadership, representation, and participation. TikTok, with its global and diverse reach, increases the chances of introducing sport and the women’s game to more people worldwide and provides a platform to trigger conversations around women’s football and build greater support and passion for it.


How do you believe global football tournaments such as the FIFA Women's World Cup can further empower women in the sport?

Representation matters. With every edition, the FIFA Women’s World Cup grows, pushing the sport to new heights. With constant positive growth, it opens up the industry at all levels and fosters space for women to take up football. Sports equity is an integral component of being a sports fan and it’s important that women’s sport is showcased in the same light as other sports, as this will empower women and young people to participate and get involved (as both fans and players).

Women and girls need to have female sports icons that they can aspire to emulate. Raising awareness and viewership in women’s sports creates support, which has a ripple effect on sponsorship and payments. Female leadership, representation, and participation are all factors that need to be prioritized and promoted on platforms to have a positive influence on the future.


Can you share some insight into the feedback and reactions received from your audience on TikTok regarding your content and how these responses shaped your subsequent work?

As a brand, the bench is very community-centric. We aim to provide content that is educational and interesting for our followers. During the 2022 WAFCON, we traveled to Morocco and documented our journey. At the time, our social media pages, especially TikTok, experienced a huge spike in traffic, engagement, and reach. This encouraged us to keep producing innovative and interactive content.

Viewing our analytics and what types of content people enjoy has allowed us to keep creating what people love. However, this never veered away from our main goal of producing content from our hearts and showing our passion for football. We’re not professional journalists. We’re just passionate fans and we love to tell the story from the perspective of a fan in the stands. The majority of our followers are already experts of the game (like every fan), so the content we create aligns more with fostering conversation and debate within the communities, although there is an educational element for those who are new to the game.


How will you be using TikTok as a platform to showcase your talents and engage with audiences during the FIFA Women's World Cup?

TikTok is a rising social media platform and we aim to produce more lively content on it. As we are not your regular social media influencers, we try to maintain The Bench SA’s authenticity by merging TikTok trends with South African football. For the FIFA Women's World Cup, we aim to embrace TikTok as a platform by showcasing our reviews and hot takes on relevant South African and African games. The beauty of football is not only in its triumphs but also in untold stories.

As we have taken the leap of faith to follow our beloved Banyana Banyana squad to New Zealand and Australia, we hope to create content that incorporates a perspective of what it's like to be patriotic supporters following our nation.