eBusiness Weekly
Tadious Manyepo
While football has grown to become a lucrative mega-dollar venture across the world, the same cannot be said of Zimbabwe.
For the latter, the game continues to be an expensive recreational undertaking and teams, from the lower leagues to the top-tier almost always incur losses every year leaving several of them on the brink of collapse.
In fact, a lot of them including former league champions, Monomotapa and Motor Action, have since folded under the weight of financial distress.
If anything, the teams in the country hardly publish annual financial statements and corporate governance is a perennial problem.
Corporate partnerships are hard to come by due to reputational issues.
It is against this background that Premiership side, Ngezi Platinum Stars, have decided to revisit their executive structure, incorporating a commercial arm that has since got the ball rolling by securing a bumper kit sponsorship deal.
The kits were unveiled at a colourful ceremony in Mhondoro on Tuesday amid high expectations, the club would be able to harness the game’s potential into a lucrative business.
The club is also negotiating with different companies in the country and beyond to secure endorsement deals for the players, a development, which could leave the Mhondoro-based team on a good financial standing and a go to place for the best players on land.
Speaking on the sidelines of the kit unveiling event, Ngezi chief executive officer Nyasha Kadenge, said the team has put in place all the necessary measures that will enable it to start running as a fully-fledged business entity.
“We are going to be doing less in terms of talking but deliver more in action,” Kadenge said.
“As a club, we have several kit sponsorship deals with different companies in the world.
“We get significant revenue from the kit deals. This year, just like in 2019, we have decided to continue in bed with Umbro. But, this doesn’t mean we have severed ties with other suppliers like Macron.
“We have put in place a commercial arm, whose mandate is to look at ways the club can make money.
“We are looking at it from a business angle. As much as we need results on the field of play, we are also aware of the need for us to score high on the business side.
“We are doing this in so many ways and copying the best clubs in the world and in the region.
“We acknowledge that football is one of the most lucrative businesses the world over but we have not fully utilised its potential here. It is this un-normal situation that we are determined to correct.”
Kadenge said her club has decided to ship kit replicas which will be available for sale across the country.
“The replicas are affordable and we are sure the sales will leave us on a better standing. We are targeting to sell at least 9000 replicas this year and that should leave us at a better financial standing.
“It is not only replica sales that we are targeting to leverage on. The commercial arm of the team, headed by Glenrise is working towards securing advertisements to be placed on our stadium, Baobab billboards.
“In the same vein, we will be renovating our stadium so that we can be able to create more space for billboards.
“We already have a convenient shop in the stadium and we are planning to modify and expand it.”
She added that the club is now embarking on a more robust junior development policy, tying players to lengthy contracts for the purposes of doing business.
“Well, we have also decided to revisit our junior development strategy. We will be investing in junior development where we are confident we will produce products for the international market.
“We are copying from the best in the world and we are confident at the end of the day, we will be able to say our Ngezi Platinum Stars business is able to sustain itself and outlive all of us.”
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