“SOCCER IN AFRICA: GIVING IT A BUSINESS FACE”

ADDRESS BY MR. MAGNUS REX DANQUAH AT THE 15th ANNIVERSARY OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF SPORTING CHAMPION WEEKLY ON FRIDAY, DECEMBER 7TH 2007.READ ON HIS BEHALF BY MRS. NANA ADWOA DANQUAH, GENERAL MANAGER, RICS CONSULT LTD.

Please permit me to first apologize for and on behalf of my husband, Mr. Magnus Rex Danquah, the Chief Operating Officer of the Local Organizing Committee (LOC) for the 26th MTN Africa Cup of Nations, Ghana 2008 for his inability to be here with you this evening.

Indeed, whilst in the days leading to this event he has been most enthused and would have loved to be here to celebrate the 15th anniversary of the establishment of the Sporting Champion Weekly and share a few thoughts on the topic for this lecture, the occasion has unfortunately coincided with the 10th and last CAF Inspection Team visit to Ghana and thus making it impossible for him to be here.

He has however promised to be with you after the Tournament to pay homage to you all, distinguished ladies and gentlemen.

Mr. Danquah was given a choice from two topics to speak on.

The first, “Soccer In Africa: Giving It A Business Face” and “Ghana 2008: Celebration Of African Talent And Spirit” and he tells me if he had made the trip, he would have made an exposition linking both for us to appreciate the correlation between the two issues.
However, for the message that he has tasked me to deliver, I will dwell on the former for good reason.

In the last 50 years or so, Soccer in Africa has seen some real growth and development without corresponding real benefits to our people, especially in developing it into an emerging industry.

What I will seek to do is to raise a number of pertinent issues that should engage our attention, going forward as a rising continent.

Distinguished ladies and gentlemen, in the last few years whilst the demand for African Footballers has risen globally due to the exploit of some players, spectatoring at our local leagues continue to dwindle to the point of near empty stadia.

This situation persists not only in Nigeria and Ghana but across the entire continent; and yet I have not heard of any Football Association that has engaged the services of any consultant to establish the underlying causes and how this could be reversed. Worse still, none of the affected clubs have even done that for its self.

Even more amazing is the fact that no club or association has undertaken or considered an exercise of consciously growing its supporters’ base, turning them into a loyal consumer base for the club as a brand or product.

For me, personally, this is one reason why I endorse and support the latest CAF decision to organize a Nations Cup (CHAN), exclusively for stars playing on the continent so that we do not expose ourselves more to the controversy of our stars in Europe, who are called every two years to debate COUNTRY verses CLUB, when it is time for the biennial Africa Cup for Nations Tournament.

It makes me wonder whether it is not time for all Football Associations and Clubs to consider re-branding as an option going forward?

Admittedly, gate takings, except for national football teams, are definitely not the major source of revenue for the maintenance and growth of our clubs. There are other options that should engage the attention of various investors, entrepreneurs and club managers in the road to establishing football in Africa as an emerging industry.

We need to look at the structure of club ownership in Africa as part of the way forward. Traditionally as a continent and a people, we are not too good at partnership and we need to address it otherwise we will continue to see new clubs emerge every other year, whilst old ones who have made names through continental club championships vanish into virtual oblivion.

Distinguished Ladies and Gentlemen, we need to have a second look at such issues as Sports Medicine critically, especially in safeguarding our investments in players: we need player medical profiling as an integral part of this exercise. Both as a Club and Association, we need to have a database of such injuries over time for each player so that to a large extent we can minimize the incidents of death of our players on the fields of play.

We again need to place a new premium on Information, Communication, Technology (ICT) as part of the way forward, not only for the platform it provides for data but also part of the various uses we can advantage of, including new media to grow the new income streams available to us.

There is then the issue of using soccer to consolidate the phenomenon of Sport Tourism on the continent. Over the years, football league matches have sustained domestic tourism as supporters and clubs travel across our various countries to play one league match after the other, competing with conferences and church conventions and yet as a continent we have failed to utilize the linkage between our Ministries of Tourism and Sports to enhance this gain. This definitely should be one of the options to consider going forward.

With regards to infrastructure, I will support CAF sticking to the 2-year cycle since it provides the opportunity for African nations to grow the stock of facilities that will enhance the opportunities given to our people to develop their God-giving talents and skills and become stars. Intrinsically linked to this is a phenomenon that our governments have failed to exploit to fight streetism in Africa.

If we look at all our football stars across the continent almost all of them have lived on the streets before – shoe shine boys, you name it. What better way to fight this creeping menace that portrays our children as people with no hope, aspiration and ambition than use our stars to give hope back to them. This way we can curb armed robbery, streetism, delinquencies n our cities. Our stars undoubtedly are the new kids on the block and we can collectively use them as MENTORS to fight this canker on the continent.

One of the loves of the Ghana 2008 Tournament is the issue of Merchandising & Licensing. For once the LOC decided not to spend its own resources to produce and market merchandizing but rather to offer licenses to entrepreneurs and investors to produce a range of over 200 (two hundred) products and services and market. This way, the LOC could concentrate on its core business of organizing the tournament and by that not only earned income but also benefited from 1% of the stock produced for its protocol at no cost. Thus, for the first time we had a licensee to pay US$500,000.00 to ensure the license produce and market T-shirts for the 26th Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON).

One of the pre-requisites for the establishment of Football as an emerging industry is the possibilities for new career paths and growths for the peoples of Africa, especially for new specialized areas that we will need to provide professional services and consultancies for.

These areas include Fund-raising, Sponsorship, Marketing and Public Relations, Financial & Insurance services, Event Management, and Sport Legal Services, to name but a few. These we could grow as any industry like Medicine, Mining, Agriculture and the like.

Indeed, I have always wondered why central governments have over the years failed to accord football a special place in the various African economies, considering the amounts of money spent on national teams camping, training, participation in international tournaments and payments of bonuses – all running into millions of dollars every year.

What, as LOC for Ghana 2008, we intend to establish for the purposes of posterity is to engage consultants to undertake a socio-economic impact assessment of the tournament on the nation so that we place all these in proper perspective.

With the amount of investments made in the construction of the four stadia for Ghana 2008 event, we consider it prudent that after the tournament the government establishes a Special Purpose Company, whose sole assignment would be to be bidding for all kinds of international events to justify the investments and also to ensure that they do not become white elephants as is the case with some previous hosts.

Finally, my own drive towards giving soccer in Africa a business face necessitated the launch of the Accra Biennial Football Expo, with the maiden one in 2006.

Much earlier in 1990, I had mooted the idea of co-hosting for the FIFA World Cup of selected African countries for the economic reasons, citing the ECOWAS sub-region as joint host; and proposed a World Conference on Africa Football to address the myriad of problems we face as a continent. I have been worried why, for all the editions of Africa Cup of Nations, it is only the host nations that draw crowds to its matches, whilst we virtually have to beg our citizenry to watch the other matches – a serious indictment on Africa Football.

This is our charge, distinguished ladies and gentlemen and this is the more reason why I regret not being able to be here personally and share a lot more in-depth thoughts with you on the way forward towards giving Africa Football a business face.

Thank you all and enjoy your evening.