BETA TV deal: Malawian football now on right path
Malawian football business has over the recent years worked towards been administered on a professional level from amateur status to make it more rewarding.
Most parents in Malawi discourage their children from playing football but to concentrate on their academic studies since a football career is not rewarding and is short lived.
Many a good player have enjoyed the limelight of playing football at Malawi’s highest level — the national football team — but once they hang up their boots they become destitute because they did not acquire any academic qualifications to get employed or any other vocational skills to financially sustain themselves.
Thus parents scorn at any hint of their children taking football seriously but rather concentrate on their academic studies.
But now football is being taken seriously and many avenues are been tries so that it can be attractive to other stakeholders to financially support it so that it can be rewarding to its players.
A huge step has been taken now through broadcasting rights. Super League of Malawi (Sulom) has awarded exclusive broadcasting rights to BETA Television Station to beam TNM Super League matches for three years from 2016 to 2018 season.
BETA beat other bidders when it offered a whopping K266 million package per season.
Clubs will now be rewarded well for their participation and this in turn will help them become more professional. In turn, more players will be enticed to join this lucrative business.
Football is a serious business out there and the corporate world scrambles to be part of it because of broadcasting rights.
Most of the sponsorship in our football is considered as a social responsibility on the part of the sponsors and they pull out as they see fit and leave the sport destitute.
But this is something of the past because once a sponsor decides to pull out, another is waiting in the wings to take over.
Gone are the days when you still find fixed advertising billboards of a sponsor at football venues who had long severed their support to the game but still enjoy the exposure.
Once we have excellent footage of our football action, it will be easier for football agents to follow up on the players they are interested in.
BETA TV will be selling our football on the international level now through coverage of our top flight football league.
The next step now is for the powers that be to renovate our stadia so that they should march the good things that will be promised with the coming in of BETA TV.
The clubs should now start planning to invest what they will earn from the broadcasting rights to build their own stadia if Malawi football is to become so glamorous on TV.
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