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The sponsorship deal between Harare giants CAPS United and a South African company has attracted much attention with some analysts questioning how Zing, a small messaging start-up, has raised the funds to sponsor a football team.
A news blog which focusses on covering information technology news and reviews about products and services in Zimbabwe and Southern region has questioned how the messaging application company can handle the financial demands of running a PSL team of the size of CAPS United.
The blog page, Techzim, expressed reservations about the deal.
“It’s crazy to have a start-up partnering to run a football club, but not being a soccer fan, who am I to say how clubs should be run.
“Like most of you, the announcement that Zing is sponsoring (or partnering to run a Zimbabwean football club) is the first we’re learning of this messaging app and the start-up.
“But yeah, a report on Soccer24 says a South African messaging start-up is sponsoring one of Zimbabwe’s biggest football clubs, and apparently also helping with the day to day running of the club. Strange yes, but that’s what the two partners are saying!”
CAPS United have indicated that the sponsors will liquidate the club’s debt and be heavily involved in steering the club to calm the financial storms and move away from the drama that characterised the club last season.
The club has been keeping a tight lid on the financial input by Zing.
However, TechZim carried the feedback they got from Zing official Glenn Pheasant following their article. Pheasant indicated that Zing already has a following of about 20 000 users in Zimbabwe. He said the application will allow the club and the fans to interface, among other benefits for the fans.
“We know how important football is to the people, but we also know that there are limitations due to costs of watching a game, or even going to a game.
“We want to interact with the people in the stadium and outside. That is why through Zing you will be able to choose the Man-of -the-Match voted by you the public. Once again we want to personalise CAPS United with its followers,” he said.
He added that the company had ample business experience and would make a success of the CAPS United venture.
“We have run successful businesses, and we believe that if the club is run like a business, we can change the negativity that follows management of football clubs. I am not saying it is going to be easy, but we want the normal person on the street to be able to communicate with a club he loves.”
According to Techzim, Zing has one key difference compared to other applications such as WhatsApp and they believe the developers will use that to penetrate the Zimbabwean market.
“They run ads in the chat stream and clicking on these ads earns the user rewards that they can redeem as airtime.
“Like WeChat it also has extra inside like news and sports match updates which, I’m assuming, will be used to get soccer fans in the country to use it.”
The blog says for the past three years since Zing was launched it has failed to take a market share from the traditional messaging applications like WhatApp and WeChat.
Online Reporter