FAM suffers K255m revenue drop
Football Association of Malawi’s (FAM) annual revenue has dropped by K255 million in the year ending June 2016, financial statements presented at its Annual General Meeting (AGM) in Lilongwe on Saturday have shown.
In 2015 FAM earned K1.255 billion, but last year the football governing body raked in K1 billion. FAM president Walter Nyamilandu has attributed the setback to donor over-dependency.
Topping the list of revenue source were grants which amounted to K717.4 million. The amount was way much lower that it totalled K826.9 million.
Another significant drop was in television rights which fell from K211.2 million to around K63.5 million while in gate takings the soccer body made a meaningful gain by raking in K67 million, which is K10 million more than the previous financial year takings, the report further shows.
While in 2015 the surplus was K377.7 million, this time it stands at K89.7 million.
Nyamilandu said that the fall in revenue collection was a result of over-reliance on donors, especially grants from the Federation of International Football Associations (Fifa).
“Sixty seven percent of the revenue is from grants and sponsorships while 33 percent is what we generate on our own. This is not a conducive economic situation because when the grants drop we also suffer,” he said.
Nyamilandu stated that they would intensify commercialisation in order to balance the self-driven revenue and donations.
“We want to do more investments. For instance, we want to have our own branded replica jerseys rather than partnering with global brands such as Nike and Adidas which has proved non-profitable. All this is aimed at balancing the revenue we make and the ones that come as grants and sponsorships,” he said.
On investment, the earnings, according to the financial statement, slipped from K74.5 million to K57.6 million.
Northern Region Football Association chairperson Lameck Khonje said though the revenue drop was a setback, he believes that the situation could be better this year.
He said as Malawi has been drawn against strong teams, Cameroon and Morocco in the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, FAM could generate more revenue through the sale of television rights.
“The prospects this year look good. If we can get better offers from the TV rights sales then we could be better off. But we also need to step up on commercialisation as the president explained,” he said. n
