Game on! or Game over!

by Riaan Nowers, riaann@elsenburg.com

TThe game auction database housed at Elsenburg by the Western Cape Department of Agriculture contains game auction data from 1986 onwards. It is a powerful tool for tracking the growth and structural changes within the growing game industry of South Africa. In previous articles, this database showed how the game auction industry reached its pinnacle in 2015 with a gross turnover of more than R2,327 billion. The 2019 season (turnover of R657,8 million) realised another high in terms of most animals ever sold, namely 49 799.

Graph 1 demonstrates the fluctuation in sales of selected species between 2018 and 2019. Black wildebeest, eland, gemsbok, klipspringer, tsessebe and blesbok proved to be popular in 2019. Bontebok, nyala, blue wildebeest, bushbuck, waterbuck and even sable antelope and buffalo sales showed a decline of more than 7% in 2019.

Colour variant sales hovered around 10% of animals sold, and the average price plummeted to new lows, as in previous years. Although most species’ average prices came down somewhat because of the higher number sold, the good news is that it seems to have stabilised as supply and demand evened out. On the positive side, exceptional quality animals achieving record prices were available on auction.

Looking at Figure 1, it becomes evident that in 2018 most game auctions realised a turnover between R1 million and R3 million. However, during 2019 it became clear that turnovers dropped drastically with a turnover between R1 million and R2 million for most of the auctions. Table 1 also supports this drop in turnover with the average now being the lowest since 2015, notwithstanding the increase in numbers of game sold.

This may sound like the game auction industry is moving backwards but the opposite is true, as more role players at various levels have now entered the industry. More auctions by more auction houses, higher numbers of game sold and persistent record prices point to a game industry that has flourished and stabilised with supply and demand reaching equilibrium.

It becomes clear that in order to be successful in this continuously growing industry, quality animals, effective marketing of auctions and game suppliers, ethical business deals, and properly researched and managed vertical integration within the ecotourism market are needed.

If this can be achieved, we can safely say “Game on!”