Sportpesa to decide on sponsorship Friday
Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards will learn on Friday whether or not their sponsorship with betting companu Sportpesa will be renewed. Officials from both clubs have been meeting with Sportpesa.
Sportpesa CEO Ronald Karauri gave hopes of returning following a series of meetings with the two clubs.
“We’ve had meetings with the clubs’ officials and by tomorrow we will make a decision,” said Karauri. “However, whether the sponsorship will be reinstated is dependent on the clubs.”
“It has been very positive and very soon we can conclude and decide to move on with the sponsorship. There are commitments from their side and by the look of things they seem like they can deliver on their promises,” said Karauri.
Measures to curb hooliganism
KPL CEO Jack Oguda has outlined steps that the KPL will take to curb the menace of hooliganism. He specifically spoke about the role that match stewards play.
“We have been able to invite Gor Mahia and AFC Leopards to this forum so that we are able to discuss with them how we can do away with this menace. One of them is to ensure that the stewards’ roles are well documented in contracts towards safety. Those with good conducts will be employed s stewards,” said Oguda to Supersport
The KPL has also been criticised for handling the two teams with kid gloves after they have committed offences but Oguda was quick to dispel that as a misplaced perception.
“We always take steps with some matches being played without fans while a cash fine has been imposed in other instances, but the problem is the recurrence so we might take stricter rules as the FKF president suggested last week since it also affects us as KPL,” Oguda added.
Poor and sometimes biased officiating has been a primary cause of hooliganism and Oguda has announced that he is working with FKF to address the issue.
“I think in terms of officiating maybe our standard are not that good but we have been meeting with FKF to ensure we improve the level of officiating. Recently two referees have been suspended and we will continue to do that until we remain with the best ones officiating Kenya’s top tier leagues, said Oguda to futaa.com
Aside from taking measures to curb hooliganism, both Gor Mahia and AFC will need to engage in public relations activities to repair their image which is dented whenever there is an act of hooliganism however slight. The Mater Heart Run is a good start.
I am the biggest critic to the inept management of clubs in Kenya but I think the uproar against AFC & Gor Mahia misses the point.
Football fans have hooligan tendencies in them. It’s a global trend, the game is the most passion inducing.
The organizers of the game have the onus to deal with the problem; clubs acting as surbodinate. So it is KPL and the owners of the stadia that should be reprimanded. All this time regulation to curb hooliganism has been weak AF. When you consider that someone died in 2006 in a stampede you’ll see my point.
Why, instead of quietly doing it’s administrative duty, KPL and other stakeholders resort to emotional outrage? Why do they continue to allow subpar football venues to host any top flight match? These are the roots to dealing with the problem.
Of course there’s the part of clubs organizing the matches well to attract even more fans and training stewards; but if people running sports have no clue regarding sports management that is what you get.
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Kenyan football tactics https://kpltactics.wordpress.com
So…Gor and AFC have the most following yet KPL decides to share the sponsorship money equally. These two teams bring the most fans and have the most expenses. KPL cannot share the sponsorship money equally among the 16 teams. Im very upset that officials from both teams did not bring this up at the meeting.
Its encouraging to note that KPL, Sportpesa and Chiko Lawi now appreciate that hooliganism cant be addressed by Gor and AFC alone. Everybody should play his part and hooligans dealt with like any other criminal. However this should not be an excuse to arrest anybody in a Gor T-shirt and brand him a hooligan as is often the case.
The Chorus of ban them, dock them, relegate them, is short sighted and only portrays the lack of creativity on the part of those advocating for it.
This is Kenya and politicians, rival teams can easily hire fake fans to disrupt a team’s matches especially K’galo’s. I say scrap the stewards role and replace them with police especially at the entry points. Why stick with the proven ineffective and inefficient stewards structure? Is it coz of “the parallel ticket sales”. Also sportpesa should remove kpl matches from their bets. This presents a major temptation to the kpl players, referees and even club officials etc, A MAJOR CONFLICT OF INTEREST. Imagine a player taking a last minute winning penalty when he had placed a bet for a draw? This apart from the monopolistic tendencies of sportpesa sponsoring the premier league and the 2 major clubs this does not augur well for club football. Possibilities for match fixing are real and high and the perception of this vice will always be there, Finally, why can’t these conditions between SP and clubs be made public? Why the secracy after all it invovles “fans”.
Good points @ oduor 12..
The surge in violence is not a coincidence. Have you also noticed a surge in poor officiating as well ? All down to the emerging disease- people are betting on KPL matches including players, fans and officials.
I don’t think that betting has anything to do with hooliganism. Most of the people who bet do so for European matches. And moreover the other teams also have few fans who bet but we don’t see this. Ingwe and Gor fans have been causing mayhem since time immemorial. I think we just have a group which doesn’t understand what sports is all about. U win, draw or lose. How comes we didn’t cause when we scored against Ushuru? And what if the goal was scored against us? We must prepare for such ‘dubious’ decisions against us
i hope the two teams do no promise what they cannot deliver just for the sake of sponsorship. How can Gor nad Ingwe as clubs stop skirmishes at KenCOm or Tom Mboya stature. Do they have the means? No. Do these teams have a database of their fans or even some knowledge of who their fans are? All these eople we see dressing in Chelsea, ManU or Arsenal t-shirts , are they their fans? No.
Security is basically a police function and the clubs even pay for the service so I do not understand how they are still responsible for something they cannot control. Gor fans (or were they goons in gor uniform) and I didn’t see gor bailing them out but were full of praise for the law enforcers.
What the Sponsor, KPL, Gor/Ingwe and FKF can do is to carry out sensitization during before/after matches for the fans. We can also start rewarding the best behaved fans by giving out merchandize from the clubs, team sponsors. This might reduce these instances of hooliganism.
The last and best is to punish the goons caught misbehaving by ensuring that they are jailed, banned or any other punishment. A ban would entail the culprit reporting to a particular police station for the duration of the match
Exactly, we need police maning the entry points (with cctv cameras) so that if bhang is later being smoked in the stadia or projectiles are thrown during matches then we know who has failed in their duty. Police are also independent and have powers to ARREST, rather than these stewards (what training do they have in security matters) who wouldn’t even measure upto to security guards. Finally if SP sponsorship is the panacea to GM’s/AFC’s woes then we fans want this translated into improve results on the pitch e.g in CECAFA & CAF, that is the bottom line. EC DON’T BITE OFF MORE THAN YOU CAN CHEW.
I now understand why SP hurriedly corrupted the soccer stakeholders in this country so as to monopolise KPL. Threats of withdrawing and renewing sponsorship at will is a new-age methodology to force the shemejis on their knees for the entire duration of sponsorship.