Football fans in nigeria have been made to belief that there is nothing good about the npfl to the extent that they listed too many reasons but one of the reasons that made me write this article is even the lost of private sector prefrence in the european league to our league.
The major argument these lads had among themselves was that no business man has ever invested his money in the league and make a profit because the 'system' is not business friendly. Example that the critics gave were that no private clubs owner ever made profit or sponsor.
Now i will like to counter their claims because this is one of the issues the 'anti-npfl' fans used in chasing away potential investors.
After i conducted a serious research on some big reigning private clubs in the 80s and 90s i came up with these following reason why these clubs stoped to operate; Using abiola babes, stationery stores,udoji
utd, eagle cement as a case study.
(1) MOTIVE: These club owners were running the business as a charity organisation not in the hope of making profit from it. Thats was why non of the clubs ever had any sponsor or collaboration with fans. Imagine a team having a full capacity stadium in its home ground on match days but not knowing how to make money from the fans by selling replica jerseys, club materials etc.
(2) FUTURE PLANS: All this teams both past and presnt to have futuristic plans for the clubs. The owners died and the clubs too died because they never plan to have any successor because after all its just a 'charity
business'.
(3) ACCOUNTABILTY: The owners felt they are not suppose to be accountable to anyone and so the gate takings (which was the major or only source of income)mostly ended up into the wrong hands with no
one the account for it.
(4) MANAGEMENT: What was the club managers experience in football business? Did they have Players develoment sheet so as to know the players market value at the end of every season? Did they know the
average number of their fans to expect on match days so as to know amount to expect as gate taking and to use in making loans payment if necessary.
So to those intending npfl investors please dont reason with the past mistakes instead work on the points listed above.
