Sportpesa to waithdraw sponsorships
Gor Mahia’s lucrative sponsorship with betting company Sportpesa may be coming to an end shortly. Interestingly, Sportpesa haven’t said anything about withdrawing their sponsorship of foreign teams which include teams in the UK and in Tanzania.
Courtesy of the Nation
Giant gaming firm SportPesa has given notice to withdraw all sponsorship arrangements with its sporting partners from next year.
This announcement was made by the firm’s CEO Captain Ronald Karauri via Twitter on Friday.
“As @SportPesa we will be giving notice to clubs and unions that from January 1 we will withdraw all sponsorship,” Karauri tweeted.
The development follows the government’s decision to impose a 35 per cent tax on net profits accrued by betting and gaming firms.
When the notice comes into effect, several sporting entities in Kenya, including top football clubs AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia, the national football teams, plus the national rugby teams will be severely affected.
SportPesa has pumped in an estimated Sh1 billion to Kenya’s sports industry through their various partnerships with Football Kenya Federation, Kenya Rugby Union, Kenyan Premier League, AFC Leopards, Gor Mahia, Nakuru All Stars and the Kenya Boxing Association.
The reason why sportpesa spread its wings to UK and Tanzania was to reduce its exposure to Kenya business and the government has just made their exit decision a lot easier ! Adios sportpesa relocate your office to TZ as well.
GOMALOTTO might as well close shop so good opportunity for clubs to start looking at partners within the micro finance/insurance space.
Can this decision be reversed by the incoming NASA gvt in August? Many young people will be adversely affected either directly or indirectly if we lose this sponsorship.
What Lucrative sponsorship deal with Gor Mahia while even the actual amount was never disclosed, opaqueness was the modus operandi and no financial accountability on how the money was either disbursed, channeled or utilized was ever published. Those were personal deals made for individuals benefit as we still experienced player go-slows, allowances delays, office closure, training pitch lock-outs, Gor Bus remains unpaid and even quarrels over sharing of Super Cup proceeds citing administrative costs implications. Hii pesa ilisaidia wenyewe tu but atleast we didn’t roll out paybill numbers. Lets look for transparent sponsors with goodwill and not deal-brokers
This is not news. Ever since SuperSport came to Kenyan football a decade ago has anything changed? Beside improvement in wages (which is SuperSport money).
Has Gor Mahia improved in any way over the same period? Beside dependence on two different single sponsorship deals. A club like Al Ahly has 12 different sponsors while Gor Mahia refuse to see logic of moving their home matches to Kisumu where they can raise more matchday money.
http://www.kpltactics.com
The Kenyan football scene cannot really be helped. Look how Zambia has improved in the last ten years as compared to stagnant Kenya. Even Uganda has a team in CAF Confederation Cup group stage already with the little domestic football improvement they have undergone. In our league, the best Ugandans don’t come close to their national team selection.
Kpl Tactics we have not improved due to total lack of long term planning and an insatiable penchant for endless transitioning and overhauling of teams in the KPL. Nyamweya’s reign during which we should have been growing was at best myopic, currently under Nick lip service and brokemanship has taken centre-stage. Progress cannot happen in a vacuum but requires structures and commitment. The ugandan teams who we always say our league is superior to, Tanzania, Ethiopia etc are progressing due to sound soccer mgt by their federations and clubs unlike here where we are close to losing CHAN hosting rights that Rwanda did superbly last year though their overall GDP is a quarter of our own. Add the theatre of absurd club infrastructure and poor leadership that is the KPL and you know Kenya hatuendi mahali CAF anytime soon kaka
We have time to source for new alternatives or become self reliable
If Karauri can do it, why not Gor lottery stuff? What are they waiting for?
I humbly propose the following to ADOR , EC plus GMFC stakeholders as option B on GMFC membership/ fundraising.
I am building on my two earlier posts of :June 16, 2017 at 6:18 pm and September 22, 2016 at 9:22 am under Financial issues caused Ze Maria’s exit & Profile of Sandro Fantoni respectively.
Let GMFC introduce an annual membership cum season ticket for its stakeholders e.g.
1. Ordinary membership + local matches( inclusive of preliminary rounds of CAF matches) for kes.2,750.
2. VIP stand membership + local matches( inclusive of preliminary rounds of CAF matches) for kes.5,500.
This is a big saving for fans since in a season for the 17 home games a fan stands to spend kes. 200/300 per match x 17 = kes.3400/5100 for Russian like me and kes.500/600 per per match x 17 =kes.8,500/10,200.
GMFC membership without the accompanying season ticket is an extra expense and an additional financial burden on the fan which he/she will avoid especially in these days of “unga” crisis.
Benefits for the club.
Let’s look at the following scenarios if we manage to attract 5,000, 10,000 or even 15,000 members in year 1 i.e Jan 2018
1. 4,000 ordinary members x 2,750= kes.11M + 1,000 VIP members x 5,500 =kes.5.5M =Total =kes.16.5M
2.8,000 ordinary members x 2,750= kes.22M + 2,000 VIP members x 5,500 =kes.11M =Total =kes.33M
3. 12,000 ordinary members x 2,750= kes.33M + 3,000 VIP members x 5,500 =kes.16.5M =Total =kes.49.5M
Let the tickets at the gate remain kes.200/300 for Russia and kes.500/600 for VIP to encourage fans to opt for membership ticket.
Taking the least games GMFC can play in a season i.e 17 league games +1 shield game i.e 18 games the ordinary ticket works out to =2,750/18 = kes.152 per ordinary tciket /match and kes.5,500/18 kes.305 per VIP ticket/match.
This is a worst case scenario meaning that if GMFC is knocked out in the 1st round of the shield cup and did not even qualify for the top 8 the club still collects between kes.16.5M and kes.49.5M at the beginning of each season.
EC (especially chairman and treasurer) must be obligated to:
1. Ensure that the AGM is held every year without fail by the end of the 4th month after the financial year end.
2.The audit yearly financial report MUST BE PRESENTED DURING THE AGM.
3. Failure of 2 above means the automatic resignation of the chairman and treasurer and their positions taken up by the 1st Vice Chairman and deputy treasurer. No new elections required.
4. Present a budget for the financial year and stick to the budget lines.
Membership rights and benefits.
1. Voting (mostly online). The membership fee will discourage non-genuine fans since you would not spend kes.2,750 just for the election its too expensive.
2. 15 free entries into the GOMA LOTTO special match day lottery-see article of 22/06/16. Free entry and discounted rates on GM merchandise.
3. Right to choose / vote for an independent auditor during the AGM.
4. Right to determine the club’s administrative structure, rules, goals etc.
I propose a special ordinary CAF Group stage membership and VIP group stage membership option whereby a member can opt to add an extra kes.500 for the right to watch the 3 group stage matches and beyond should GMFC qualify.
For those who pay this upfront and GMFC falls short it can be taken as a prepayment of next season’s membership cum season ticket.
For members who do not take the offer perhaps they can pay an extra kes.750 should GMFC when GMFC qualifies for the group stages.
For non-members CAF group stages can be kes.350 at the very least.
The purpose of linking GMFC products to GOMA LOTTO is to counter or rout out fakes. Few people will want to forego a chance to win kshs.1k and above by buying fake products be it match tickets or merchandise.
Use of e-sales ( paybill numbers) for tickets and merchandise will mean that all funds are deposited into the club’s official bank accounts.
Let me end there otherwise it may be become complicated. Suffice it to say with the fickle nature of sponsors solid,sustainable membership is the bedrock of our beloved K’Ogalo. We may start small but as the titles stream in year after year membership will expand. EC has a role to play because nobody will accepted misuse of their money, EC must be beyond reproach.
Once again we are here not to celebrate but to absorb one more of the many bad news staring as on the face , issues we are conciously aware exists but when they occur , the mandated officers pretend to be surprised and start running around helter skelter like headless chickens pretending to be looking for a solution which they cannot possibly get bcoz they are the problem.
We have had sponsorship b4 from Tuzo under the same chairman and we knew it was to expire at a certain point , but when it did , it caught as so by surprise that once again our club was sank into the turbulence of uncertainty a point which again we are staring at with the opaque sport pesa deal we had.
So y are we as we are and y is it that we never learn , or is it that we dont wanna learn , or is it that we have already learnt but we prefer to keep the situation as it is to allow room for exploitation , is it not a fact that just a little bit of managerial common sense can see Gor earning triple the peanuts our sponsors blackmail as with after we have deliberately signed lopsided contracts that only benefits the officials , the sponsors but not the club , players or funs.
Is it not then a wonder that people who hitherto the elections could give a limb to interact with the Gor fraternity have since then gone into convenient hibernation where behind the curtains they are partaking of obscene tons of carcases while the players and the fans swallow Kilolitres of saliva outside as the sychophants from within and without this wall hover around with microscopes looking for the increasingly illusive crumbs.
Eight years at the helm and we still have to go through this viscious cycle…Sad.
And so for those who react to all the negatives we endure as some sort of incidenses isolated and independent of others we have encountered b4 , u r wrong ,what we have is a systematic and structural rot that has conveniently been encouraged to fester the cumulative effects of which we now witness , the Head of the fish is rotten