The Jan Smuts Stadium is an athletics and football stadium in the Arcadia suburb of

East London East or Orient is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from west and is the direction from which the Sun rises on the Earth. Etymology As in other languages, the word is formed from the f ...

, Buffalo City. The stadium is named in honour of

Jan Smuts Field Marshal Jan Christian Smuts, (24 May 1870 11 September 1950) was a South African statesman, military leader and philosopher. In addition to holding various military and cabinet posts, he served as prime minister of the Union of South Af ...

, and is adjacent to the

Buffalo City Stadium Buffalo City Stadium (also known as the BCM Stadium) is a multi-use stadium in East London, South Africa. It is currently used mostly for Rugby Union matches and is the home stadium of Border Bulldogs. The stadium holds 16,000 people. The stad ...

Football related tenants

During the 2009–10 football season, it was named as Blackburn Rovers FC's home venue, competing at the Eastern Cape province of

Vodacom League The ABC Motsepe League, previously known as the Vodacom League between 1998 and 2012, was founded in 1998 as the current Second Division and the overall third tier of South African football. The competition is regulated by SAFA, and until 2012 ...

. When the team after the season won promotion for

National First Division The National First Division (NFD), officially known as the Motsepe Foundation Championship for sponsorship reasons, is the second-highest league of South African club association football, football after the South African Premier Division. Both t ...

, they however moved their home venue to the adjacent

. In the 2010–11 season, no less than 4 other teams from Vodacom League (

FC Buffalo FC Buffalo is an American soccer club based in Buffalo, New York, United States, with teams in men's and women's soccer. Founded in 2009, the men's team plays in the National Premier Soccer League (NPSL), a national amateur league at the four ...

Bush Bucks Bush Bucks is a South African association football club. The club was founded in 1957 and originally based in Mthatha in the Eastern Cape. In 2001, the team moved to East London, Eastern Cape, East London. It was nicknamed ''Imbabala (The Bucks)' ...

, OR Tambo DC, Tornado), picked the Jan Smuts Stadium as their preferred home venue. Soccer venues in South Africa Athletics (track and field) venues in South Africa Multi-purpose stadiums in South Africa Sports venues in the Eastern Cape {{SouthAfrica-sports-venue-stub