INNOVATION IN SPORTS ADMINISTRATION REQUIRED

Dec 12, 2008 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom

The Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport is presently promoting an inter-block four-a-side football competition – “Greatest of de Street”. The Big Question is: towards what end?

What happens at the end of this competition? What is the ministry hoping to achieve through this competition? At the end of the sponsorship and the fun, what happens?

How do the talented players that have been identified from this tournament improve their skills? Does the ministry have any plans for those players who were part of the competition but who are not members of existing first division clubs in Guyana? What is going to happen?

I hope the ministry would reply to these concerns and at the same time try to explain to Odinga Lumumba just how much money is being pumped into local football.

Odinga has been trying to make a point for a long time now. He has been saying that corporate sponsors are not putting money into football and boxing but are doing so for cricket and horse racing.

I want Odinga to understand that corporate sponsors invest heavily in football. They sponsor teams, they help upgrade facilities, they sponsor tournaments and as we have witnessed over the past nineteen years they have invested heavily in the annual Kashif and Shanghai tournament. If he is not obtaining adequate sponsorship for his club, he needs to ask himself why.

Sponsors are however involved with other clubs and with football in general. We have seen the amazing development whereby one company has bought for the Christmas Day matches of this football tournament, some three thousand tickets at a cost of six million dollars for distribution to school kids.

Such level of sponsorship does not occur in any other sport. There is no tournament like that in cricket or horse racing which attracts the sort of funding that football receives from the corporate world.

And the reason why this happens is because the corporate sponsors know a winner when they see one. They see the organization that goes into this tournament and they feel that it is something that they wish to be associated with and there is massive sponsorship.

There is a lesson here for all sporting associations. Once you create the right brand, once you have the organizational skills, once you can bring out the crowds, then the sponsorship will come. People should try to emulate the Kashif and Shanghai grouping so that they too can enjoy the sort of sponsorship that is now desired.

If you are organizing a league call it the National League; call it the Premier League; call it what you like. But go out and seek more than one sponsor. Brand the tournament and then go out and attract the sponsors.

Just a few weeks ago, there was a final of a cricket competition played between two Georgetown-based teams. This prize money was $50,000.

Now compare that with the one million dollar first prize that the government has donated for the Kashif and Shanghai tournament.

I really hope that instead of associations complaining, that they would get their act together and put together a tournament that would attract sponsorship from a wide range of companies, so that prize money can be attractive. This however is going to take effort and organization, but it can be done.

I also hope that the Ministry of Culture, Youth and Sport would organize the players involved in the inter-block tournament into teams which can compete at the first division or second division.

I hope they make these sorts of inroads because it would seem to me to serve very little purpose to have organized this tournament without the necessary follow-up action.

Sports can play an important role in Guyana’s development, but what is required are administrators to take the various disciplines forward.

What is also needed is for administrators to stop complaining about the lack of sponsorship and instead to go out in society and secure the funding for competitions and clubs.

What is needed is for clubs to have their own fan base that would not only cheer them on during matches, but would also help to support these clubs financially. I have always argued that we need to involve more prominent persons in society into sports administration.

Quite a few persons are today trying to make a name for themselves through sports. What we need instead are persons who are well known and who can do a great deal for sports, coming together to do something for the associations.

Instead of complaining, sports administrators need to be innovative. When this happens there will be no shortage of sponsorship.

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