Let’s rethink who should be allowed to own football clubs
What you need to know:
- The high mortality rate of football clubs is perhaps the second worst thing that ever happened to the Kenyan game.
- The worst thing of course – no prizes for guessing – is the perpetually inept, self-seeking and crooked football administrators that we’ve consistently churned out over the years.
The tragedy of our time is the innumerable headstones jutting out of the Kenyan football landscape, a poignant reminder of once vibrant clubs that are long dead and buried in a massive football graveyard.
The high mortality rate of football clubs is perhaps the second worst thing that ever happened to the Kenyan game.
The worst thing of course – no prizes for guessing – is the perpetually inept, self-seeking and crooked football administrators that we’ve consistently churned out over the years.
Time has proved that participation in the Kenyan Premier League is a matter of life and death in the practical sense of the word.
If the number of clubs that have folded in the history of Kenya’s top tier league is startling, the epitaphs on the headstones of some of these teams read like a roll of honour for Kenya’s finest.
Here lies Oserian Fastac, two-time Kenyan champions…In memory of Utalii FC, conquerors of Kenyan football in the year 1997…RIP Mumias Sugar: You reigned but never ruled…Ours truly Rivatex: Gone, but never forgotten…
We could go on and on, ad infinitum. This list is almost inexhaustible.
'GOOD OLD MEMORIES'
But even as we reminisce the good old memories of our long gone clubs of yore, it’s worrying that one needs not to look too far to spot clubs that are currently heaving under the weight of participation in the Kenyan Premier League.
Take the case of Nakumatt FC for instance.
It’s been long in coming but sooner rather later, the deep hole which the club’s troubled benefactors – nay owners – had dug themselves into was only going to bury the club.
Sure enough, the supermarket’s financial woes have finally sounded the death knell for Nakumatt FC. The club management has admitted as much – that team is now on its deathbed.
It can rightly be assumed that the team’s string of poor results is a direct consequence of the crippling financial crunch.
It’s a shame that a club which once prided itself of being bankrolled by a retail chain juggernaut has now been reduced to begging for alms.
Which brings me to my point.
For how long must this vicious circle of local companies forming and disbanding football clubs continue? Why commit to an unsustainable venture which eventually leaves all concerned parties worse off?
Granted, not all the clubs that have folded in Kenya are institutional teams, but a sizeable chunk are.
Scarlet, KTM, Panpaper, Rivatex, Eldoret KCC, Mumias Sugar, Utalii, Kenya Pipeline, Oserian Fastac, Karuturi Sports - we could go on till the cows come home.
The rationale that a number of these corporates have based their decision to dabble in football is the brand publicity that comes with “owning” a club.
Yet, if brand publicity is indeed the end game, simply striking sponsorship deals with clubs of their choice would spare them all the trouble of fully owning and running the affairs of the team.
Perhaps, Kenyan corporate bodies need to learn from successful multinationals such as Coca-Cola, Visa Card, Gillette and MasterCard which have forever been associated with big money sponsorship of the Fifa World Cup.
It’s a no-brainer that such corporations have the financial muscle to successfully run at least one football team in each country in Africa, if so they wished.
But they don’t. Because it makes little business sense.
Sadly, with our local companies’ obsession with “owning” teams, many a great football club will continue going the Nakumatt way.
