South Africa's new franchise T20 competition will take precedence over Australia's Big Bash League when it comes to player availability, due to the league's commissioner Graeme Smith.
The newly-named SA20 begins on 23 January 2023, when the BBL will still be in its group stage, and will run for month.
The BBL final, meanwhile, would may be not be staged until 4 February.
"The players in our league who have accept the agreement up will be at Australia up until the early days of January," said Smith, a last South Africa captain.
"They'll be released to come and play here, from where they may be fully available for the South African league."
The six franchise teams have all bought owners of Indian Premier League sides and the recruitment process has already Started.
The SA20 teams, that stay in Cape Town, Durban, Gqeberha (formerly Port Elizabeth), Johannesburg, Paarl and Pretoria, will all be allowed to field a maximum of four overseas players per game.
England internationals Moeen Ali, Jos Buttler, Sam Curran and Liam Livingstone already signed, along with West Indians Jason Holder and Kyle Mayers.
A player auction to finalise the squads will be held on 19 September 2022.
"We have got an extensive list of international players that we're sorting out for the auction," Smith, 41, said.
"We are still covering some of the auction details and we are sorting out the player registration number due of the large number of players.
"There has been an element of pre-signing that has been taking place and the teams have a purse of $2 million (£1.7 million) that already includes the pre-signed players. A lot of work has done into it and we are very grateful with what we have done and what we can create going forward."