This week in a brief ceremony organized at the secretariat of the Ghana Football Association (GFA), a new headline sponsor was out doored for the Ghana Premier League and Women’s Premier League.
Well, after a host of back and forth and rumors from the grapevine, Betpawa, a betting company agreed to invest bountifully in the Ghana Premier League; make it competitive, and help it regain its popularity amongst the local folks and on the continent.
READ: betPawa Ghana Premier League 2022/23 Fixtures: Kotoko to host Nsoatreman, Hearts to face Bechem
The last time the league saw anything close to a major sponsorship deal was in 2018 when Zylofon Cash signed a mouth-watering $10 million deal for 5 years with the erstwhile administration headed by Kwesi Nyantakyi, only for it to be discontinued at some point much to the disappointment of key stakeholders of the league at the time.
In a sharp turn of events, the Kurt Okraku-led administration since assuming the reigns of Ghana football has not been spared the constant berating from the media, club administrators, and stakeholders amongst other vested groups and parties for their inability to get a major headline sponsor for the Ghana Premier League. Well, I say Kudos to him and his administration for helping secure this package.
With this new sponsorship package in town now, I’m looking at which persons or groups stand to benefit from this massive cash injection of $6 million from BetPawa for the next 3 years.
For a while now, one unending issue that seems prevalent in our football circles is centered around, player remuneration in the Ghana league. There have been one too many calls for at least a minimum wage of a sort to be instituted on behalf of the players or an increase in the monthly wages of the players to prevent the incessant player exodus that seems as though it’s getting keenly worse by the day.
A lot of clubs, bar sponsorship, rely heavily on the deep pockets of their owners. Once, there’s a delay, cessation or disaster, there’s mostly agitation, player, and technical staff upheavals in the club which leads to a bad turn of form on the part of the playing body.
To a large extent, this sponsorship deal will do a lot of good to the football fraternity in the country, at least it will marginally solve the revenue problems of several clubs in the country as well as complement StarTimes’ revenue they are providing to clubs through media rights money.
The 2022/23 Ghana Premier League is scheduled to kick off on September 9, 2022, hopefully, clubs get their respective packages from this sponsorship to help them navigate the course of this season.
