Turn for sponsors to contract malady
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Saturday, 27 October 2012 20:33
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The mysterious divisive bug that has for ages afflicted Zimbabwe football across all its branches, forestalling any progress our game might otherwise make on the international scene, appears to be now spreading to the football corporates.
Until this year business associates of local football had never found any grounds to quarrel on, bar the infamous Econet/NetOne stand-off seven years ago triggered by a controversial clause in the agreement signed between the PSL and Econet, that specificaly excluded fellow tele-communications companies from any involvement in top-flight league sponsored then by Econet.When the error of Econet’s ways was pointed out and examples were juxtaposed of English football where Barclays Premiership side Liverpoolare bankrolled by Standard Charterd Bank, the giant cellular services provider’s reaction was to pull out.
That development was regrettable and forgettable. But I will not waste precious time and space flogging a dead horse because what we have been seeing in 2012 is bamboozling on it’s own. We now have companies not even involved in the same line of trade that still scratch and maul each other for room that lies aplenty in the local game. It was unbelievable that leading financial institution BancABC could be impeded in their noble efforts to raise the stakes for today’s top-drawer Castle Lager Premier Soccer League battle between Dynamos and Highlanders at Rufaro, by a non-competing product for that matter.
You would have expected voices of dissention — were there to be any — to sound from the camps of sworn rivals such as CAPS United who never see anything good at DeMbare or, say, Black Mambas who, like Highlanders and Dynamos, also draw their seasonal financial support from the same bank.But Mambas and CAPS took the medicine lying down. Resistance came from the most unlikely of sources — the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League who should rather have been first to welcome the deal.The PSL appears to have a bone to chew with their erstwhile bankers which should not be surprising after the Sup8r showcase that had been a regular feature on their calendar for the past five years failed to materialise this season, prejudicing the league of a windfall they had gotten used to.
But as chief financiers of both De Mbare and Bosso, a central role that has enabled the two giants of Zimbabwe football to participate hassle-free in the Castle Lager Premiership ensuring in the process deserved mileage for the league sponsors, BancABC were perfectly entitled to incentivise their supplicants.Hashford Matemera, BancABC’s managing director, stated unequivocally at the Press conference that their benevolence was induced by a desire to improve the standard of performance on the pitch and guarantee maximum entertainment to the spectators, some of whom would also walk home with their own niceties.
In the pubs, supporters of both Dynamos and Highlanders filled their glasses with more cold beer and drank to the news when it reached them. How sad it was only the PSL leadership that could not recognise the success of their own product.Chairman Twine Phiri and chief executive officer Kennedy Ndebele declared the historic deal a damp squib, questioning BancABC’s sincerity but puzzling ordinary lovers of the game who were celebrating another innovation in the local game that is clearly in need of spicing up.
The two officials produced their terms of agreement with Delta Beverages which they allege prohibit them from accepting “third party” sponsors in the league programme and went on to describe BancABC’s worthwhile gesture as “ambush marketing”.
Yet today’s match will forever be part of the Castle Lager Premier Soccer League statistics and will never be counted under the BancABC banner. The league retains all the marketing rights for the game and will not in any way suffer any prejudice from whatever internal arrangement Dynamos and Highlanders strike with their sponsors. I will let the words proceed from Matemera:“Worldwide in professional football, whether it’s the La Liga El Classico between Barcelona and Real Madrid, the Soweto Derby or the rivalry in the English Premiership there is always more done to support high-profile games like the Castle Lager Premiership match between Dynamos and Highlanders.
“This is an important stage for the PSL. It might be the title-deciding game. We hope it will be voted match of the year and what we are doing is make it more exciting and competitive for everyone even for sponsors, the league and all who love soccer.
“We are recognising it as a league match and we are not substituting the league sponsor. The question for corporate companies should be, do we want to support soccer? If the answer is yes, then in what ways can we support the game? And this is one way of supporting the game by improving the playing standards and bringing fans to the soccer stadiums.’’
To me this sounds like complementing, not competing against, the league sponsors. So where did Twine and Kennedy get lost? The devil, I believe, is in the detail of their terms of agreement with Delta Beverages. Let’s take a look at the contentious clause, Article 4.2.“Premier Soccer League and the respective Clubs may, subject to Delta Beverages approval of the arrangement and the sub-sponsor, which approval shall not be unreasonably withheld, negotiate sub-sponsorship arrangements with third parties for the supply of apparel, accommodation, transport and other specific requirements to Premier Soccer League and to the Football Clubs competing in the
Competition, provided that the status accorded to such suppliers shall be “official supplier” of (identity item) status and not “official sponsor” status which belongs exclusively to Delta Beverages.’’The clause is self-explanatory, all what was needed was for the respective parties to notify Delta Beverages as implied in the contract otherwise it was an in-house matter between the clubs and their sponsors that did not concern the PSL or their sponsors at large.
Experts conferred with me last week that the clause was ambiguous in that it could be intepreted differently, if only for the PSL to land both deals in a harsh enviromnent in which clubs are having to scrape the surface to survive. To avoid any counteraction, BancABC should have been allocated the status of “official supplier’’ since they were furnishing their supplicants with both kit and incentives and were in no way clamouring for the status of “official sponsor’’.
Only that it was not the first time this year that the football world had collided in football. Quite oddly, BancABC were involved in the previous two clashes. There was the NetOne Charity Shield between Dynamos and Motor Action in March when the bank were almost barred from advertising their logo on the Dynamos jerseys as NetOne claimed the sole rights.It was astonishing for the simple reason that the two companies were actually rumoured to provide services to each other.And few can forget the Savanna Tobacco episode when it was the turn of BancABC to cry foul after the cigarette merchants introduced a landmark deal to ferry Dynamos and Highlanders supporters free of charge for matches and BancABC feared they were encroaching on their territory.
Of course divisive wrangling among board members or disputes with their coaches is commonplace in Zimbabwe football. It is the new conflicts pitting sponsors against themselves that must be declared misplaced.
Lets chat at goodwill.zunidza@zimpapers.co.zw
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Article publié le lundi 29 octobre 2012
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