Kenyan clubs fear they have lost SportPesa bet

Kenyan Premier League club chairmen smiled gleefully when SportPesa announced a Sh80 million annual title sponsorship deal with the league last year.

But following the betting company’s lavish spending on English Premier League clubs in recent times, the same clubs are now shaking their heads in regret having realised that they may have sold themselves short in as far as the financial details of the contract are involved.

In fact, all of the nine club officials Nation Sports spoke to yesterday were united in the belief that a serious contractual review is of prime importance, even as their contract still has two more years remaining in it. Their concerns are fuelled by the fact that SportPesa has added Everton onto their growing list of foreign clubs on their payroll which include English Premier League clubs Hull City, Arsenal and Southampton, as well as Tanzanian giants Yanga and Simba.

Just like the Hull City deal that involved some Sh400 million, SportPesa’s Monday deal with Everton has been reported as the highest the club has ever received in shirt sponsorship, and is believed to be close to Sh3 billion.

English publications speculate that with such amounts, Everton’s new deal with SportPesa would give them the seventh highest annual income from shirt sponsorship ahead of the EPL’s 2017/2018 season.

In his defence, Ronald Karauri said that the United Kingdom arm of the company is completely autonomous and makes independent decisions based on their needs.

“People need to understand that there is now a UK office whose main ambition is to grow the presence of this company to the level of other betting companies abroad. I cannot stop them from putting in money where they feel they will be able to achieve this because there is also the marketing aspect to all this,” he said.

It is this extravagance from SportPesa’s UK arm that is causing turmoil amongst KPL club officials who now feel that their product is being belittled.
“My team is also getting sponsorship from a betting company so my comments wouldn’t be objective but oh yes. We will have to renegotiate afresh when this contract ends,” KPL executive committee member Bob Munro said.

Munro’s Mathare United enjoy Betway sponsorship. His comments were echoed by Laban Jobita, KPL’s stadia safety and security committee chairman who said: “But of course I’m not happy. Kenyans are giving a lot of money. It is only fair that Kenyans get back a substantial amount of that money back. You can’t compare what they are giving us to what they are giving the English clubs.

RE-EVALUATE THE TERMS

“But before we even get there, what they are doing in the KPL is unfair. If they take two teams and give them some 30 million each, while the other clubs are getting just Sh5 million from them, are you promoting fair competition or killing it? Does it mean that they only care about the big clubs?” he quipped.

Elly Kalekwa, whose Sofapaka team recently received a Sh50 million sponsorship from Betika, said: “Every sponsorship start from somewhere and even if the contract wasn’t negotiated properly, we acknowledge that it is on but we have to re-evaluate the terms KPL should get a lot more from SportPesa,” he said.