adminEllina Mhlanga Sports Reporter
THE Zifa Northern Region has secured a sponsorship deal for their Division One league with a Japanese company where they will get three cars and playing kits for all the teams.
Zifa Northern Region chairman, Willard Manyengavana, said they reached an agreement with World Navi, a company involved in selling Japanese second-hand cars and the partnership will see the firm supporting their league.
“We are looking for sponsorship for our league so we got some partnership with a company called World Navi based in Japan. It’s a Japanese company involved with the selling of used cars from Japan.
“We have an agreement where these guys will give us three vehicles of which we are going to use two for raffle tickets to raise money for the league.
“And the third one we will give it to our Player of the Year, it’s actually the first time we will be giving our Player of the Year a car.
“They are also going to give us US$20 per every vehicle bought from Zimbabwe so we are encouraging Zimbabweans to buy cars form World Navi so that we will benefit as a league.
“They also gave us playing kits for each team. We are also developing a website, we will manage it here but it was developed in Japan, and they will put their adverts on that website.
“While we were in Japan we also attended a J league game for Vissel Kobe and we made an arrangement that our Player of the Year will go for trials with the team,” said Manyengavana.
Manyengavana said they reached agreement with World Navi early this month and they were hoping the move will encourage local companies to also come on board and support football.
“We went to Japan on the 2nd of March, myself and the vice chairperson (Martin Kweza), for a week to negotiate this package.
“For the playing kits, it’s coming to about US$16 000 and the cars we haven’t put a value until they reach us, maybe in a month’s time they will be here.
“They came to Zimbabwe looking for business opportunities to sell their cars and they met Stanley Makombe (a marketing agent) who then referred us to them. Our appeal is for the public to buy the raffle tickets to support us.
“It’s just the beginning we had gone for sometime without sponsorship and our local companies didn’t seem to be supporting. We approached quite a number of them but with little joy. We believe the coming in of World Navi will probably encourage our local businessman to support Division One football.
“It’s a fact Division One feeds into the Premier League and as a result we indirectly feed into the national teams so we believe we should get support,’ said Manyengavana.
Manyengavana said the partnership is performance based and will run for a year after which they will negotiate for another deal.
Online Reporter