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I
have attended football events in Nigeria for many years but I have not
been as impressed and hopeful as I have become after attending the
Nigeria International Football Expo, organised jointly by Fairplay and
Vantgarde — two marketing companies run by very intelligent and
energetic young Nigerians.

When in the middle
of this year Justin Ofor, Managing Director of FairPlay called me to
say that he and some associates of his were going to organise a
football expo in December, I was sceptical of the chance of success of
such a venture. My fear was not because I thought he didn’t have the
resources to pull it, rather, it was from the fact that he had been
away in London for a while and I wasn’t sure he would successfully
navigate his way around the difficult terrain that Nigerian football
and business had become.

That fear has
proved unfounded and last Thursday I participated in an expo that
introduced fresh perspectives on how Nigerian football should be run as
profitable business. The speakers chosen by Ofor and his partners, the
ebullient Helen Emore, Chief Executive Officer of Vantgarde and Wole
Oyewo, the Executive Director, were top notch.

Interesting presentations

It was a departure
from the usual style where vacuous speeches are made and delegates fall
asleep in the middle of proceedings due to boring presentations. Two
presentations that engaged my attention were the papers presented by
Usen Udoh, a senior director with Accenture and Alex Goma, Managing
Director of PZ Cussons.

The presentations
titled, ‘Remodelling the football industry through public private
partnerships (Infrastructure, Management and Marketing)’ and ‘Marketing
Football in Nigeria: Media,

Sponsorship,
Events, Merchandising and Endorsements’ respectively knocked the bottom
off the ideology of many football managers. It thrashed the belief by
many football administrators that money belonging to companies
operating in the private sector was theirs for the taking simply
because Nigerians including some of the managers of these clubs, were
football crazy.

The point, according to the two speakers, is profit.

“There is no free
lunch. Businesses exist to make profit and in so far as companies want
to be in involved in CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), their
primary aim is to make profit. So, if managers of football want to
attract sponsorship to the game, they must let the companies know what
is in it for them. They must talk about a plan, balance sheet and they
must talk about P and L (Profit and Loss),” Udoh said in his
presentation.

Biggest impediment

The responsibility
that this places on managers of football in Nigeria is to be diligent
enough to articulate a plan of action for driving the game. The biggest
impediment to the growth of the game particularly in the area of
attracting private sector participation has always been the
misconception that no matter what happens, the private sector can
always be counted upon to provide funds for the administration of the
game given Nigerians’ passion for it.

As we have seen in
the last one year or so, companies have held on tightly to their cheque
books. Whatever has flowed from them to Nigerian football has come in
trickles and are not enough to influence any meaningful development of
the game. What has also emerged from the expo is the need for
administrators of football in Nigeria to give serious thought to
branding as a vehicle for creating value for their products.

Image is everything

From what has
happened in the country in the last six months or so, it is clear that
our football managers do not have the faintest idea of the role
integrity plays in getting businessmen to do business with them. We
have seen for instance how the Nigerian Football Federation (NFF), the
body saddled with the responsibility of running football in the
country, has suddenly become a theatre of war on account of the
ambition of a few individuals.

In the Nigeria
Premier League, (NPL) the struggle for power has left the league
without sponsors with the league in its sixth week. Yet, the NPL hopes
to attract sponsors to their venture Now, which right thinking
businessman would want to do business with the NPL under such
conditions?

Like Goma rightly pointed out the issue of image is key.

“In attracting the
private sector, branding plays a key role. Organisations are mindful of
the kinds of bodies they go into partnership with. No company will go
into partnership with a body to sponsor an event that will erode their
brand. So, if football managers want to get sponsorship, they must up
their brand,” he said.

Our football
managers must make the game attractive enough. They have in their hands
a property that can generate billions for them annually and then they
won’t have to worry about grovelling before officials of the National
Sports Commission (NSC) simply because they want their activities
funded.

For the organisers
of the expo, they should go a step further to make available to
football administrators a comprehensive report of proceedings at the
expo including the papers presented and the contributions made by
panellists and guests. This information will be of immense benefit in
charting a way forward for football as business in Nigeria.

Of course, we should not pretend that this will necessarily occasion
an overnight change in the present situation. Like Mumini Alao, Chief
Executive Officer of Complete Communications, publishers of Complete
Sports, said in his paper, ‘Restructuring the regulatory framework for
football business in Nigeria’, we need to put in place legislation that
would guide the conduct of football as business so that in the main,
the army of profiteers who take advantage of the lax regulatory
environment to milk Nigerian football are reined in.