Home / News / SA20 Season 5 Auction Guide: Purses, Rules and Records
SA20 Season 5 Auction Guide: Purses, Rules and Records
The Season 5 auction guide: R42m cap, four purses, 19 slots, no retention cards and R1.17bn across five seasons.
By Saleem Sial · 6 Oct 2026
The Season 5 player auction took place on Wednesday 7 October at 17:00 SAST, live on SuperSport, with four franchises still holding slots and money to spend. Durban's Super Giants and Paarl Royals were already complete, so the evening belonged to Joburg Super Kings, MI Cape Town, Pretoria Capitals and Sunrisers Eastern Cape. Between them they had a maximum of R35.025 million to spend on nineteen slots, inside a salary cap that had risen to R42 million for Season 5.
The money in the room was large. Joburg Super Kings held the biggest purse at R20.6 million, followed by MI Cape Town at R9.35 million, Sunrisers Eastern Cape at R3.6 million and Pretoria Capitals at R1.475 million. Across five auction seasons, the league's total spending had reached R1.17 billion, which put the evening in context: this was no longer a new league finding its feet, but an established market with serious money moving through it.
The rules shaped every bid. Each squad runs to nineteen players: eighteen in the main group, with a maximum of seven overseas players and a minimum of eleven South Africans, two of whom must be under 23, plus one wildcard who sits outside the salary cap. There were no retention cards at the Season 5 auction, which meant every bid was final and every franchise had to live with its choices straight away.
The record book gave the evening its backdrop. Tristan Stubbs was the league's first record signing and now captains Sunrisers Eastern Cape, while Dewald Brevis holds the overall record after his R16.5 million move to Pretoria Capitals at the Season 4 auction. Matthew Breetzke's story showed the other direction: picked up at base price of R175,000 by Durban's Super Giants at the first auction, he returned home to Sunrisers for R6.1 million in Season 4.
Dan Nicholl ran the auction as auctioneer, with Chris Morris and Neil McKenzie as analysts, and the results are covered in the site's Season 5 auction report. The guide mattered because it set the terms: nineteen slots, four purses, no second chances. What followed was a night that gave the league its youngest headline act and its most expensive teenager, and set six squads on the road to 17 January. Auction coverage reached viewers through JioStar in India, Sky in the UK, Apex in Pakistan, Fox in Australia and Willow in North America. The auction set the season up.
Source: https://www.sa20.co.za/news/everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-season-5-player-auction