Netball Association of Malawi (Nam) is still operating in dark ages as it is yet to develop policies to help the association generate broadcasting rights and gate revenue, Malawi News Sport can reveal.
Despite reports from the World Netball indicating that the world netball governing body, World Cup hosts and participating teams receive broadcasting rights, Nam insists that it has never received its share from broadcasting rights.
Nam General Secretary Isaac Chimwala admitted that the association has no policy to guide it in terms of implementing broadcasting rights and gate revenue initiatives.
“Time is ripe for us to develop guidelines to tap from gate revenue and broadcasting rights. We have noted that during international tournaments, the media broadcasts our matches and yet they have advertisers. We need to generate revenue through this adventure,” he said.
Chimwala said in absence of guidelines, Nam has been failing to implement gate fee initiative due to lack of proper structures.
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“Most of the facilities do not allow us to charge as more sport associations use one venue at once. Maybe, we should develop a mutual understanding to give each other [associations] a chance to use the facility separately,” he said.
A local sports analyst Kandani Ngwira said Nam is supposed to earn a percentage of World Cup broadcasting rights revenue from the world showpiece held in Cape Town, South Africa.
“In 2019, the World Netball raised $600,000 from broadcast rights which was supposed to be shared among the body [World Netball], host country and participating countries. Meaning that Malawi benefited. They are supposed to also benefit this time around,” he said.
However, Malawi National Council of Sports Public Relations and Communications Officer Edgar Ntulumbwa said they are disappointed with Nam’s failure to generate income on its own.
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“We equip associations including Nam with skills to turn commercial but they seem not to learn. We run training programmes including courses which the University of Pretoria administers. We do all this to help associations find other ways of generating income rather than relying on the government alone.
“It is disappointing having taught how to write a proposal they still expect us to draft for them and present to potential partners. Nowadays, broadcasting rights are one of the major revenues in sports besides kit sponsorship and gate revenue,” he said.
During last year’s Tri- Nation Cosana tournament, Nam implemented a gate collection exercise but it ended in controversy as part of the funds were used to pay for officials allowances at the expense of the players.
