By Adiza Bawa and Maame Esi Quainoo
Sports Business Professional and a Former FIFA Marketing Consultant, Neil Armstrong Mortagbe has argued that one of the biggest challenges in Ghana Football and in the sponsorship of Sports, particularly Football is the orientation of those who run the game.
“Orientation, meaning for example, you’ll go out there to source for a sponsor, the sponsor comes on board and he’s expecting some benefits and you find the beneficiary of the sponsorship seemingly so disinterested in leveraging the support that the sponsor has brought”.
He said, “when it comes to leveraging, you find that a lot of us in sports either don’t understand it or we are just not interested. The money comes, the resource comes and that is it”.
Mr. Mortagbe said, It begins from understanding who one’s target audience is. “As a football person or as a sports person. When you go out there and source corporate help, the corporate person on that side becomes your audience. You go and sell a very nice story but having sold the story, do you know his expectations??? Do you understand those expectations and do you buy into those expectations? It’s one thing to say I understand it and it’s another thing to buy into it. And if you bought into it, there’s a lot of things we see in our football because we are talking about saving our passion, we wouldn’t see them”.
The Former FIFA Marketing Consultant noted that “with the goal field deal we did in 2015, goal field has to actually commit budget to enforcing the elements and sponsor agreement with the Ghana Football Association”.
He added that “there are times where we go to the stadium to go and pick tickets for the headline sponsor and we spend 5hours waiting for tickets.
Knowing that’s there were benefits expected on the side of the goal fields we worked it into frame that a group of people who are responsible for ensuring the FA get what is their deal under the agreement and goal fields also get what was their deal”
“The money comes and that’s where I will situate the beginning of the conversation’s orientation so we have to put in place an agency to ensure that everything that has to be delivered was delivered.
“I talk about tickets, the T-shirts the players wear and the cap to make sure that the players get those shirts to wear them, they don’t wear any other paraphernalia that conflicts the brand”, he posited.
The Sports Business Professional indicated that a club owner is chasing a referee for a disallowed goal, adding that, before that club owner runs onto a football field in his mind he is saying “I am devaluing the brand on whose back I ride to get the few cedis to run my club.
He said GFA President, Kurt Okraku came up with a nice mantra, “Bring back the Love”. Mr. Neil Armstrong argued that “How many football people have bought into that mantra”?
“And you’ve got the orientation of someone who believes in it. Before you step foot on that park to chase anybody you will think this is bringing back the love not only of Ghanaians not of the corporate Ghana to come support our football. I hold the view that the orientation is the beginning of all and until that orientation problem is worked on it becomes difficult to create an image that is attractive to cooperate Ghana to support”.
