Council tips companies on sponsorship

Malawi National Council of Sports board chairperson Sunduzwayo Madise has told companies and organisations not to sponsor sports out of pity but consider their benefits from the exposure.

He said this on Friday night at Sunbird Mount Soche in Blantyre during a stakeholders engagement meeting ahead of the fourth edition of the Malawi Sport Awards scheduled for February 16 at the Bingu International Convention Centre (BICC) in Lilongwe.

Said Madise: “Companies or organisations must never sponsor sports out of pity because that is wrong. It is our plea that they should only come in when they have the passion for sport or, if they are in business, they should benefit from the exposure.

“It should always be a win-win situation. They should only partner associations with vision and strategy as regards to creating platforms and ways of effectively advertising the companies’ products. Both the companies and the disciplines should ably benefit from the partnerships.”

He said companies and organisations will benefit if they partner the council ahead of the Malawi Sport Awards as platinum, gold, silver and bronze sponsors as they will be able to advertise their products before and during the event.

President Lazarus Chakwera is expected to be the guest of honour.

Rab Processors Limited marketing manager Andrew Lulker agreed with Madise that sports sponsorship or partnership should create value for both parties.

“When we come into sports partnerships, we don’t come as donors. When we take money out of our pockets to bankroll sports events, we want to gain mileage and market our products. Sport must be a vehicle through which companies should be able to easily promote and market products,” he said.

The Malawi Sport Awards was introduced in 2017 to recognise outstanding athletes, sports administrators and media practitioners for their contribution to Malawi sports growth.

Only the best of the best athletes make the grade for the national awards as they feed into the Regional Annual Sports Awards for Southern Africa, where the country’s awardees compete with counterparts from other countries.

Some of the categories during the awards, budgeted at K200 million, are junior female/male sports person, sports woman with disability, sports woman, sports man, national team, sport code, coach, umpire/judge/referee, best executed sports development program, sports administrator, non-citizen and sports district of the year.