Website of major rugby team in South Africa hacked
The WP Rugby website appears to have been hacked, with its news blog currently flooded with spam posts promoting online gambling.
While many South African sports teams are sponsored by sports betting and online gambling companies, the posts on the WP Rugby website point to intermediaries promoting unlicensed overseas operators.
Visitors to wprugby.com‘s news section are currently met with a barrage of articles instead of the latest updates on the Western Province team.
The attack is part of what is commonly referred to as SEO spam or “spamdexing”. It aims to hijack the high search engine authority of established websites to promote predatory gambling platforms.
In this case, the spam posts on WP Rugby’s website appear in Google News, further increasing the reach of the malicious content.
These types of hacks often exploit outdated plugins or weak administrative credentials to gain unauthorised access to a website’s backend.
However, while the whole WP Rugby website appears to be running on WordPress, the rest of the site appears untouched, aside from its meta description, which shows up in Google.
Western Province Rugby has faced organisational challenges in recent years, including being placed under administration by the South African Rugby Union (SARU) in 2021.
Daily Maverick reported at the time that SARU had no choice, as the provincial union faced hundreds of millions of rands in lawsuits and had cash flow problems.
SARU announced in March 2025 that it had notified the administrator of the Western Province Rugby Football Union (WPRFU) to wind up the Union’s period of administration.
“The union was placed in administration when it was in a dire financial position, and its standards of governance were in disarray,” it stated.
“That is no longer the case, and to continue with administration was viewed as being unreasonable.”
The decision cleared the way for WPRFU to hold elections and restored its full voting rights once the process was completed by June 2025.
“The decision was taken in acknowledgement of the union’s financial stability following the conclusion of a private equity investment in its commercial arm.”
It said WP Rugby and the Stormers commercial entity were both restored to a stable financial position by March 2025.
“The Exco determined it would be unreasonable to continue with administration, and the administrator was instructed to return control to the member,” it said.
Under SARU administration, the administrator was tasked with concluding a private equity deal, completing the move to the DHL Stadium, and managing the sale of the Newlands Stadium and other owned properties.
“The first two responsibilities have been successfully discharged, and the proposal relating to the sale of certain properties, including Newlands rugby stadium, would now be the Union’s sole responsibility.”
It noted that the equity transaction and the sale of Newlands and other properties required the approval of the Western Province Rugby Football Union clubs.
The presented equity deal was approved. However, the clubs rejected a proposal to sell the properties on 10 June 2024.
Screenshots of the WP Rugby website hack
Spam posts from WP Rugby appearing in Google News
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