There is no excuse for football clubs in Zambia to continue operating as charitable organizations with a one key sponsor mentality when they can function as profitable businesses, more so with the appointment of club Chief Executive Officers – CEOs and delinking of clubs from their main sponsors.
Puncherello Chama, a well-known sports enthusiast and socio media blogger has said that one huge advantage of the Zambian football league is that it is well organized, but there need for the clubs to up their marketing and sales strategies to be able to fill the stadiums, attract more sponsors and to get their players to be noticed at other more lucrative leagues to bring in more revenue from player transfers.
Speaking in an exclusive interview with Zambian Business Times – ZBT, Puncherello Chama says that there has to be a change in mentality for the Zambian football clubs to see themselves a business for them to stop relying heavily on one key Sponsor and be able to generate their own income as well as attract fans coming in numbers to watch the game.
“That has to do more with Marketing, that’s why we struggle to have people come for matches. Because clubs do not take themselves as businesses and it’s only until they take themselves as businesses, will we see more aggressive marketing efforts.
When they treat themselves as businesses, attracting more fans to increase and maximize on gate takings will become a key part of their business to generate more income. Now if one club is not seriously attracting paying fans, it is just concentrating on the sponsors money, it will become a disadvantage for that particular club”.
“As long as the mentally of the club management is not that of being a business, it can’t grow. They can’t even think of expanding their stadiums to get more paying fans and more marketing revenue. If the mentality slowly changes, then these other issues of having a packed stadium will start happening because, when you change your focus, you change the club into a business”, he said.
When asked whether the Zambian clubs have the capacity to have modernize their stadiums, he stressed that having a modern stadium is not a guarantee that people will turn up in numbers to watch the matches. It all trickles down to serious marketing and promotion activities.
“Yes there are cubs which can invest in a modern stadium. However even if you invest for example in modern stadium, people will confuse that to people automatically turning up for matches if the stadium becomes better that is not the case. Yes, some people will, but not everyone”, he said.
A good example is that of NAPSA stars, who now play at Woodlands stadium. The venue is modernized, they are the only super league team which plays there, but do they attract huge crowd? Lusaka Dynamos play at the National Heroes Stadium which is a modern Stadium built in 2013, has the crowd increased? Do they have bigger crowds than other clubs who do not have modern stadiums?
Chama challenged the existing management teams at football clubs to grow their paying fans base and attract these fans to watch every game live to turn their clubs into fully fledged businesses. If you already have fans, having a modern stadium comes as a bonus.
