FAM cautions on scorchers images

Football Association of Malawi (FAM) has warned companies, organisations and individuals against exploiting the Scorchers image rights.

This follows an influx of companies and organisations using the team’s players in purported congratulatory messages for winning the 2023 HollywoodBets Cosafa Women’s Championship.

FAM commercial and marketing director Limbani Matola in interview said using the players’ images to promote organisations’ brands without the association’s approval is a violation.

He said: “Our humble request to companies and organisations is to avoid exploitation of the Scorchers image rights. They can congratulate the Scorchers without exploiting the image rights.

“This is happening at a time that the Scorchers are in desperate need for support. It’s an unfortunate that some people want to gain mileage without contributing in any way to the success of the team. This is not only illegal, but also immoral.”

Matola said companies that want to promote their brands using the Scorchers players should follow the right procedure.

“We would like to invite the corporate that want to associate themselves with the Scorchers or want to sell their products, to do so using legitimate means and not ambush advertising. They are free to approach us.”

He said the association has a right to protect the image rights by litigation.

“But for now we just want to caution the companies and organisations. Otherwise, as the team image rights holders, we can take them to task and they stand hefty penalties when it comes to litigation,” he said.

According to Fifa, image rights refers to proprietary rights of a player’s personality, and the right to control, licence, exploit and prevent third parties from making use of attributes related to the player’s image.

This includes the player’s name, nickname and/or initials, squad number, image and/ or photograph etc.

Fifa code of conduct on brand protection states that exploiting image rights of players, national teams or events is ambush advertisement.

The code states: “The common denominator of such prohibited marketing activities is that they primarily seek free advertising.

“We consider ambush marketing to be a priority in our brand protection work.”

Soccer analyst Patrick Zgambo said FAM needs to protect the players’ images rights and ensure they benefit from them.

He said: “At this moment it is chaos because there is no clear and formal framework to govern sports image rights and that is wrong and disadvantages not only to the athlete but also their clubs and their nations.

“This abuse is not just from streetwise commercial companies trying to get a freebie and ride on euphoria of a nation invigorated by sudden success of a sports team to sell products and services.

“Even the clubs and nations that use athletes images in Malawi, rarely trickle those commercial gains to the athletes because none of these athletes draw a line in the sand and negotiated that there is a difference between an athlete and a club.

 “Here in Malawi the trouble is that both athletes and maybe clubs are out of touch with how far the world has advanced and do not patent these rights or include them or necessary waivers  in contracts, thus leaving themselves vulnerable.

“When a club/national team makes money on images rights, it should trickle to an athlete but that has to be clear in a player’s contract in the first place.”