The boss of the League Management Company, Mallam Shehu Dikko, has shed light on the moves of the league body to become financially buoyant.
In a statement made available to journalists, the affable football administrator explained that the football body is not oblivious of the needs to raise funds for the league and the clubs. Stating that the LMC have always been creative and proactive in line with the best global practises, as well as, the financial demands of world football.
The erudite football administrator and lawyer, was quick to recall the moves of the LMC, since 2015, to spread its financial web and make it, all inclusive in order to attract more sponsors and increase its revenue base.
Dikko explained, “since the end of the 2015 season, the LMC decided to drop the title sponsorship module in favour of the multi-sponsorship model which is the elite sponsors based on industry categorization.
” The idea implies that if you sign a title sponsor and pay N750m annually. That somewhat, means the revenue for the league stops at that. But if you now go for elites sponsors, like having maybe 8 ( eight) Nigeria based on the industry and earn an average of N300m from each, you can now raise like N2.4b annually.
“And all the brands will run and promote the NPFL brand. So the elite sponsor model have more benefits both financially and brand wise and we adopted it in December 2015,” he explained.
He remarked gleefully that the EPL also adopted the same model in 2016 by dropping its major sponsor Barclays and decided to run the EPL and 7 elite sponsors. This is not to say they copied from us, but we did it first and that they are doing it after us validates our decision as a right decision. Today, many leagues are now doing the same thing.
In line with the creative sponsorship model, he explained that the LMC went on to sign deals with NBL (STAR) in 2016, and others like OCP and 1XBET and even FIRS as partners all in 2017.
” Though the fund might not be too large but it helped sustain the league until we resolved the TV sponsorship aspect of the league. We also need TV to achieve the overall objectives of getting the eight elite sponsors at the right value. Therefore, in the business plan with Next TV, the eight elite sponsors are part of the revenue forecast.
Dikko stated that the funds elite sponsors are bringing in with Next TV, is now included in the running of the show. He disclosed that the LMC have been working with this funds without additional income from other sources.
He went on to reveal that since 2016, the LMC, have had in place, a special arrangement with its bankers, that guarrantees it access to draw funds to run the league pending when the sponsors pay.
According to him, it has helped to create some cash flow stability since the sponsors make payments only on agreed dates and can also default.
He added that the league body
are confident in the abilities of the sponsors to redeem their financial commitments, therefore, they offered their our personal assets as guarrantee in this regards.
Mallam Dikko who also doubles as the 2nd Vice- President of the NFF, was quick to remark that whenever the LMC delayed in redeeming its financial obligations to match officials and sundry issues, it is sometimes attributable to time default by the sponsors and probably by its bankers.
