Whispers of my mind

Taking you through the whispers of my mind. Making known the voices inside me.

Tuesday, 10 February 2015

OF FOOTBALL SPONSORSHIP AND SOME SICK CONTRACTS



The joke that is Malawian football will never cease to astound me. The funniest part of our game is in the boardroom where it is managed by a bunch of comedians who have never achieved anything for the country. They are so clueless as to how much investment is needed to uplifting the standards to match those of our friends elsewhere.

What caught my attention thus far is this TNM super league sponsorship where I hear that no other mobile service provider is allowed to sponsor any super league team as long as the TNM sponsorship contract is in effect. Seriously this is taking the football family for granted; in fact whosoever was party to this nonsense brought us 10 plus steps backwards regarding football development.

I hear the Bullets failed to court other mobile service operators like Airtel simply because TNM and Sulom plus FAM agreed on some contract like document that stops other wanna be sponsors to come in as long as they are their competitors. 

I also remember Azam tigers this other season had struggled to have their jersey scribbled “Azam” because of this sponsorship accord. 

Picture this, for years now we have been debating as to whether ours is an amateur league, a semi professional or a professional league. I think now we have the answers; we are nothing but an amateur league because everything about our football stopped making sense long time ago.

All you hear from these football jokers during cup prize presentation ceremonies is some applauding to TNM for “working to uplifting the game of football in the country through their sponsorship”. Geez! We are a sick nation indeed. This nonsensical sponsorship can’t be applauded. Yes we are so desperate for sponsorship but we don’t need to be jumping to all the tunes being plucked by these companies, besides where is the corporate social responsibility.

Just take a look at South Africa. The Premier Soccer League enjoys sponsorship from four companies, MTN, Absa, Telkom, Nebank and as you can see, Telkom and MTN are rivals in business. Apart from that, there are no restrictions in jersey naming. Orlando Pirates and Kaizer chiefs put on Vodacom labelled jerseys but are freely participating in the MTN8 wafwafa and the Telkom knockout donning their Vodacom uniforms.

In fact, MTN sponsors four clubs in the premiership: Ajax Cape Town, Bloemfontein Celtic, Golden Arrows and Black Leopards.

Back home, with this worthless contract between TNM and our super league how do you expect companies to come in and sponsor our clubs? What will they benefit from such a venture? They would opt out because they can’t have their company logos and names on the jersey of the clubs in a company because of these useless restrictions.

It’s high time this contract is reviewed otherwise it doesn’t make sense to me.

TNM always not with us…. Especially in football.