Editorial Comment: Football should preserve its soul to lure sponsors

Dynamos players, celebrating with their fans, after winning the Mbada Diamonds Cup final, in the last competitive football match played in this country on November 27 last year. But, yesterday, the 2012 domestic Premiership season officially got underway with the season-opening NetOne Charity Shield Cup, bringing the game that is played on the field, rather than one played in the boardrooms, back on centre stage.
Life will return to our stadiums once again, as supporters make another stand for their football clubs, and everyone will be carrying huge expectations for their favourite teams.
For some, the ability to just avoid relegation would be an achievement while for others like champions Dynamos, CAPS United, FC Platinum, Hwange and Highlanders, winning the league championship will provide the right definition for a successful season. We are excited, about the football season, just like the fans who carry big dreams for their clubs, the players who want to make a big impression and the coaches who will want to be the ones who provide the Midas Touch that will separate the men from the boys when the curtain comes down. There is a reason to believe that we are in for a good ride. Last season was a landmark for the domestic Premiership that moved from being an unbranded league, which was a prohibited minefield for prospective sponsors, into one that partnered with Delta Beverages, Mbada Diamonds and NetOne.
The arrival of FC Platinum, a football club that paid players handsomely and also gave them the security of having a decent home to stay, also changed the game and set benchmarks that forced other clubs to try their level best in terms of catering for the welfare of their playing and coaching staff. The incentives, provided by the various sponsorship packages, helped bring out the best in the players, and the quality of the game rose a notch, and we watched some very good games during a season in which the battle for the league championship went to the wire.
The response from the fans was also good as they flocked back to the stadiums and more than 600 000 supporters were recorded as having paid to watch all the 240 Premiership games played last season. Suddenly, the Harare Derby showdown between Dynamos and CAPS United became too big a match to be played at Rufaro, without compromising the safety of the fans, and both their league matches and their Mbada Diamonds Cup tie, were played at the National Sports Stadium.
All these are encouraging signs but the brutal truth is that we can do far much better.
There are a lot of lessons that we can take from last year to try and have a better season this year.
The sponsors, to their credit, have not only remained committed to our Premiership but, as NetOne have already shown, they are ready to splash even more money into the league.
What is important is to ensure that we safeguard such sponsors so that we provide an attractive environment that will make those, who have been sitting on the fence, to have no choice but also come on board. But we won’t do that if we are still stuck with doing business the way it was done in the Stone Age and it’s sad that, in this modern era, we still have player ownership disputes like the one that has been plaguing Ocean Mushure’s move to Dynamos.
It’s sad that, in the week leading to the Charity Shield Cup final, Motor Action officials came out in the newspapers to announce that they could be forced to field an under-strength team tomorrow because they were having challenges funding the signing-on fees needed to tie their main players to contracts. While Hardbody have been cleared, to play in the Premiership, it’s very clear that they are coming in under a cloud with questions hanging over their use of an ineligible player, a charge they escaped on a technicality, and other darker issues related to the Centralgate match-fixing scandal.
All this negativity has a tendency of frustrating sponsors. Twine Phiri and his PSL leadership have done commendably well, under difficult circumstances, and have charmed a number of sponsors along the way, but they also need to deal effectively with issues related to discipline in their Premiership family. We can’t continue to have the kind of leakages that are being reported at the gates where Dynamos, for instance, instead of reaping income from a crowd of 35 000, ends up only getting earnings from 25 000 because the other 10 000 fans cannot be accounted for. In developed leagues, like in England, they account for every cent that is paid at the gates and they can even afford to issue season tickets because they have organised structures that protect the financial interests of the clubs.
In our Premiership, big clubs like Dynamos, CAPS United and Highlanders still suffer from cartels that operate at the gates and reap huge earnings while very little flows into the club’s coffers at the end.
We also wait for the day when the biggest chunk of sponsorship packages will go into the coffers of the clubs, in the form of prize money, rather than be eaten away by administrative costs as is the case with the majority of our sponsorship deals in the PSL. Phiri and his management team have to pursue the SuperSport deal, with all the energy they can summon from their bodies, because it is a very crucial deal for our clubs who cannot continue to live from the little that they get from gate-takings.
This deal revolutionised Zambian football and now they are the proud champions of Africa.
There are a lot of great expectations, as the new football season gets underway and while last year’s season rose beyond the expectations, we believe we can do even better as a united family and our national game can take huge strides going forward.
The ball is in our court.