Tigresses secure K10m Lilongwe Dairy sponsorship: Call them ‘First Choice Tigresses’
It never get sweater than this! Blantyre-based netball powerhouse Tigresses have all the reasons to smile after securing a lucrative K10 million sponsorship deal from one of the top food and beverages company, Lilongwe Diary (2001) Limited and the team will now be called ‘First Choice Tigresses’ respectively.
The partnership which is expected to run for 3-years was officially unveiled on Tuesday at Crossroads Hotel in Lilongwe and according to the agreement the company will be assisting the team with K10 million per year up to 2021.
The former Admarc , Bingu Tigresses and Sports Comple Tigresses club has been without sponsorship since 2016 a development which contributed to poor performance in both Southern Region Rainbow Paints league as well as in national competitions due to lack of motivation.
Speaking after the signing ceremony Lilongwe Dairy Sales and Marketing Manager Gabriel Phiri said they have decided to support the team after getting concerned with the financial challenges that it has been facing.
Phiri also said as a company they have among others taken a step by joining netball in order to help in promoting the sport in the country.
“Everyone knows that netball is the only sport which is putting Malawi flag on the map, so after receiving a sponsorship proposal from Tigresses we did not hesitate because it is also one of the best club with good performance.
” We strongly believe that with this partnership we’ve made a massive combination and that the team will really help us in promoting our brand through First Choice products,”said Phiri.
He further challenged the team to perform to their best if they are to increase their chances of enjoying the partnership by among others contributing more players to Malawi National Netball Team (The Queens), develop a lot of young netballers who can be combined with the experience ones and produce talented players who can go and play professional netball outside Malawi.
In her remarks Team Manager of the team Hellen Mpinganjira described the sponsorship as a timely gesture which has come at time when the team was in a serious mission aimed at bringing back the team to its winning spirit and reviving the behaviour of grabbing trophies which she said could’ve been difficult to fulfill the plan due to lack of resources.
Mpinganjira admitted that team has been struggling to win trophies because the players have been lacking motivation.
“It is a huge task to run a team without sponsorship and chances of winning games are always very slim. Sometimes players were failing to attend training sessions for the whole week due to lack of transport and when we go to the matches the performance wasn’t convincing at all to the extent that we were even being beaten by smaller and beatable teams which was a very big painful thing.
” But today I’m a happiest person for securing this sponsorship from Lilongwe Diary. It will be a big challenge for us to meet what the sponsors have requested from us but let me take this opportunity to say that we’ll try our level best and am very sure that with God everything will be possible and we are all geared to help in promoting their products,”said Mpinganjira.
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