Gor Mahia should learn from SA's Cape Town City FC

Gor Mahia players celebrate winning the 2017 SportPesa Super Cup in Tanzania on July 5,

One of the youngest football clubs on the continent is South Africa’s Cape Town City FC. Ideally, it has been in existence for only two years. It was not formed in 2016 per se, but was reformed then and the club that can pass as its parent was formed by dairy workers in 1937.

The parent club collapsed, so to write, and its franchise rights were bought by a businessman who re-formed the Cape Town City FC. So, while its parent is much older than most clubs that play in the Kenya Premier League (KPL), Cape Town City FC itself is very young, so young that you are tempted to ask why the same title shirt sponsor of Kenya’s two biggest — and probably oldest — clubs decided to be their title sponsor too.

As an outsider of both the betting firm and the football club, I cannot tell why the former settled on the latter yet there are older football clubs in South Africa’s Premier Soccer League which could have given them value for their money.

Whatever the reason, it must have made business sense to SportPesa — and we cannot be so wrong by guessing that there must be many things that Cape Town City FC is doing right, or better than most, if not all of clubs in the KPL that endeared SportPesa to it so early in its life.

There are Kenyan clubs that have been in existence for ages, but still find it hard to attract corporate sponsors or partners and have to beg State entities or rely on politicians in order to meet their local and continental obligations.

A few weeks back, Gor Mahia, Kenya’s most successful club in terms of trophies, and the biggest in terms of fan base, almost failed to honour a match against SuperSport in South Africa because of lack of funds to buy air tickets in time. At least that is what we were told, or heard, after the delivery of the air tickets by the Nairobi Governor Mike Sonko.

That was a class act from a philanthropist you can argue, but for the club, the optics were not good because it portrayed it as a confused, disorganised and flat broke football club that has to wait till the last minute to get its ducks in a row.

Gor Mahia proved the naysayers wrong, and managed a goal in South Africa, and went to the next level because of a victory against the same club weeks earlier in Machakos. True, the club was going through a rough patch considering that its sponsorship deal with SportPesa was in limbo after the betting firm withdrew citing higher taxation regime.

But the fact that Gor Mahia was experiencing lean times is not news. Unlike Cape Town City FC which has other partners, Gor Mahia relies on only the title sponsor, and when it pulls out, the club’s activities are affected, and politicians have to chip in.

It can now be assumed that Gor Mahia’s problems will be over, thanks to CAF’s Sh27 million windfall because of the level the club has reached in the continental competition and the return of the title sponsor.

But Gor’s advancing to the next level of the continental competition has come with its set of challenges which the club could have avoided several years ago if only its management had stopped living in medieval times as far as modern sports is concerned.

There are certain terms that the club will have to meet, and Kenya’s most successful club might shamelessly play its home matches in other countries because having its own ground has never made sense to the club’s successive management teams over the years.

Gor is winning matches, you can argue, but is it not shameful that such an old club cannot do its things right and attract partners or sponsors like its peers on the continent or clubs that were re-formed just two years ago?

The return of SportPesa should not lull the club’s management into a comfort zone that the Green Army in swimming in loads of cash. Instead, it should make them realise that one sponsor can never be enough and make them change tack and attract other partners who can make the club avoid holding a begging bowl every time players have to travel to match venues.