Malawi FA has done well on Airtel Top 8 broadcasting rights

Malawi football has always been that of amateur level ever since and several efforts to turn it into commercial have always been thwarted in their infancy but we can pat the back of Football Association of Malawi (FAM) for what it has done on the second edition of Airtel Top 8 in the just ended 2017 season.

For the first time in the history of Malawi football, teams that participated in the Airtel Top 8 received funds which FAM realised from the media broadcasting rights and they shared 80 percent of the over MK8.6 million that was raised from the total of 11 games that were played over four weeks and were all broadcast on television,  seven of them live whilst four were delayed.

FAM’s Commercial & Marketing Director Limbani Cliff Matola said the Top 8 Media Broadcasting Rights package gave them a solid case study that if well organised the football teams — the real owners of the game — are bound to benefit from additional revenue.

And he rightly said elsewhere broadcasting rights is a huge source of revenue for the teams and for the 2018 season FAM is working on having official media partners for the beautiful game because broadcasting revenue provides enrmous value addition to the game.

He added that  they will  soon flight adverts inviting the media players to submit their proposals to become official FAM’s broadcasters based on sustainable business benchmarks.

This is a good development and perhaps FAM can also court Super League of Malawi (Sulom) on how this can also work with TNM Super League, whose broadcasting rights with Beta TV collapsed unceremoniously.

Sulom needs to do some soul searching and borrow a leaf off FAM on how they managed to do it so well.

In the 2017 season, FAM also managed to successfully carry out advance ticket system. That should also be maintained and Sulom too need to borrow a leaf out of it especially the games.

One aspect that make our game to never move forward is lack of control at the gates. There is rampant  fraud at the gates but FAM tried to end it through advance ticketing.

Our football can grow through media broadcasting rights as well as making sure every tambala is accounted for from the tickets.

Well done, FAM and continue with these two systems. Our football should move in the direction of commercialisation with ease.