Why Kenyan clubs should stop relying on one sponsor

AFC vs CHEMELIL FC Chemelil Sugar's Apolo Otieno is guarded away from ball by Aziz Okaka of AFC Leopards during KPL Match at Kasarani stadium on Nov 11, 2017. [Jonah Onyango, Standard] .

Gor Mahia and AFC leopards need to follow examples of top clubs like Al Ahly of Egypt

Teams across the world have sponsors divided into various categories and don’t have to beg for tickets when flying out.

How did it come to this?

That is the question many football fans have been asking since Tuesday when Gor Mahia FC and AFC Leopards announced they were considering withdrawing from the CAF Champions League and Confederations Cup.

It was hardly the New Year message their proud supporters expected, coming after a year when the emblematic teams returned to the apex of local football with Gor winning the Kenyan Premier League as Leopards lifted the GOtv Shield.

This followed the termination of their sponsorship with betting firm SportPesa after the gaming firm pulled the plug on all local partnerships earlier in the week.

Debate has raged on mainstream and social media with some accusing the betting giants of holding the teams and other local sporting entities/individuals who benefited from their partnership to ransom.

SportPesa took the drastic action after the Government failed to backtrack on the implementation of the 35 per cent tax proposal on gaming and lottery businesses effective January 1.

Others have turned on Gor and Leopards, the grand old institutions of Kenyan football, for putting all their eggs in the SportPesa basket, leaving them ruthlessly exposed in the event their sponsor took such extreme measures.

“We are few weeks away from kick off of our continental matches in the 2018 CAF Champions League which starts in February.

“Traversing the continent to honour our fixtures is an expensive affair which Gor Mahia cannot afford on its own. These matches are a source of pride for the nation as participation in the tournament raises Kenya’s profile as a sporting nation,” Gor chairman, Ambrose Rachier said in a statement after the club was informed of SportPesa’s withdrawal.

“Our gate collections are not enough to cater for that expense and also pay players and the technical bench, we are in dilemma. This is tantamount to killing football in the country. No Kenyan club is going to successfully stay in the 2018 KPL,” Rachier said.

“We have no sponsors right now. We are going to withdraw from CAF assignments. We are urging other like-minded corporates to emulate SportPesa and support community clubs in Kenya. I don’t know how we will pay the 10 international players we have signed ahead of the season,” his Leopards counterpart, Dan Mule decried.

Simply put, the best supported Kenyan football clubs who share 28 league and 20 domestic cups between them cannot afford to take their pride of place among fellow African giants after SportPesa pulled the sponsorship rug from under their feet.

If that does not qualify to be a national disaster, then it can be termed the crying shame of a nation and the best illustration of the skewed nature of Kenyan sport.

Officially described as an ‘industry’, in reality Kenyan sport is nothing more than a token tool of social mobilisation put on the backburner by successive regimes.

Unfortunately, Gor and Leopards have over the years been used as a footstool to political office, wealthy benefactors coming in to bankroll their activities only to abandon the teams when their ambitions are realised.

Alfred Sambu, Cyrus Jirongo, Musalia Mudavadi, Rachel Shebesh, George Aladwa and Alex Ole Magelo are some examples of local politicians who have been officials of Leopards.

Opposition chief and club patron, Raila Amolo Odinga, the late Joab Omino whose idea of turning Gor into a private limited company was shot down and Homa Bay Governor, Cyprian Awiti are among politicians with ties to K’Ogalo.

Kenyan corporate apathy to sport is however, the biggest factor that has stalled the growth of Gor and Leopards into powerful brands.

It is an open secret that most Kenyan companies deem sport as a Corporate Social Responsibility function, not a revenue tool.

That explains why for example, the annual Kenyan Open golf event attracts over 70 local sponsors despite being an event for the privileged few.

No Kenyan has ever won the Open and its impact on the growth of local golf is negligible at most, but that has never stopped companies falling over each other to put up their banners in an exercise seen as an effort to please the hordes of CEOs who patronise the four-day event.

Since football is the most popular sport in the country, one would expect Gor and Leopards to have sponsors queuing up to plant their masts but this is not the case because as a product, Kenyan football has little commercial appeal.

Derelict stadiums, low spending power of supporters, incidents of violence, political undertones and the fact that the Government pays little regard to sport have combined to turn Gor and Leopards into beggars.

Until SportPesa changed the laws of the local game, the most a local team had ever announced in sponsorship was the Sh30m deal Bamburi Cement signed with Sofapaka in 2012. Even then, that amount is pocket change for a team like Manchester United for example.

Through the years, Gor and Leopards have hired marketing firms to approach potential sponsors but each time, their efforts were rebuffed until a company that was founded a few years ago -- in 2014 -- came into the picture. As recently as 2015, Gor were in danger of missing out on the 2015 Cecafa Club Championships before a few wealthy benefactors got together and saved the club at the 11th hour, then the team went on to lose in the final against Azam FC of Tanzania.

The previous year, lack of funds saw Leopards almost miss their trip to South Africa to play SuperSport United in a Confederations Cup clash, with delays in securing visas before the team went on to lose 2-4 on aggregate. On both occasions, corporate sponsors were nowhere to be seen.

The picture is totally different elsewhere. Sample this, record English Premier League winners, United have sponsors divided into categories of global partners, regional partners, media and telecommunications partners and financial partners.

Their official website, www.manutd.com lists global partners as Adidas (official kit supplier), insurance heavyweights AON (principal partner), Chevrolet (principal partner/shirt sponsor), 20th Century Fox (official feature film partner), Aeroflot (official carrier) and AlladinStreet.com (official online marketer).

Others are Apollo Tyres, Casirello del Diablo (wine partner), Columbia (outdoor apparel), Deezer (music partner), DHL (logistics partner), EA Sports (video gaming), Gulf Oil International (lubricant and fuel retail), HCL (digital transportation), Kansai Paint (paint for crying out loud), Marathonbet (betting partner) and Milly (official mattress). Tag Heuer (watch), Uber, Toshiba Medical Systems, Yanmar, Swissquote (forex) and New Era (headwear) complete the global partnership roster for the Red Devils.

So, it is not unusual to see ManU team travel on Aeroflot, get picked from the airport by Uber, sip bottles of Casirello after a victory, don Tag Heuer watches, drive Chevrolet cars to training or send packages home through DHL, a pampered existence that is a gazillion years away from their Gor and Leopards counterparts.

Spanish LaLiga champions, Real Madrid CF have listed three main sponsors, Emirates Airlines, Adidas and Cepsa, nine global partners, 12 regional sponsors and 10 others for their basketball team. Barcelona have Nike and Rakuten as main partners, six premium partners, nine official partners, 26 regional partners, two other sports main partners for their basketball team and Serveto as the official section partner.

Like Gor and Leopards who have been with SportPesa, Real and Barca share German automakers, Audi as global partners.

In Africa, Al Ahly, the most supported club on the continent with over six million registered fans, shattered the Egyptian record when they inked a $30m (EGP 250m/Sh3.09b) sponsorship deal with Saudi Arabia’s Sela Trading Company in 2015. Sela beat off competition from Al Ahram Advertising Agency who previously sponsored the team and Al Ahly can count on Vodafone, Shell Egypt, Huawei, Juhayna (dairy firm), Egyptian Steel, Domino Pizza, Coca-Cola, Societe Arabe Internationale de Banque (bankers) and Nestle Pure Life (water).

From England to Spain through Egypt, it is clear from examples above that all successful football teams have a robust commercial and marketing function that guarantees their existence as business, not just sporting entities.

That local clubs and federations have only one sponsor is a crying shame -- and they can only blame themselves for not treating their clubs as brands and failing to market them. As a matter of fact, it is foolhardy to blame a sponsor for withdrawing, and fans should take their officials to task for not living in modern sporting times.