FDH Bank proves a true partner for sports
The year 2019 has concluded silently with FDH Bank as a major blessing to Malawi’s sports world with record sponsorship deals.
Previously, a number of companies and organisations made headlines for coming up with sports sponsorship, but it is the name of the home-grown bank that reverberated across the country for having a major impact.
Everybody smiled when the bank unveiled a landmark K450 million five-year sponsorship for a national football league cup that will see K90 million spent per annum on (K53.6 million) prizes and a K25 million winners’ purse.
The inaugural event, which will involve all regional premier league teams (62 teams) and the 16 TNM Super League outfits, is expected to run from May to September this year.
The mouth-watering sponsorship proved so sweet for the Football Association of Malawi (FAM) to the point that the local soccer governing body’s president Walter Nyamilandu announced they would no longer accept other sponsors for elite football competitions.
“We have reached optimum number of sponsors for national football competitions; our plate is now full. We are not hungry or thirsty anymore. We will no longer take more sponsors for elite football cup competitions,” he said.
Instead, the FAM president said if other companies come up with sponsorship offers they would be advised to channel them towards other needy categories such as women and youth football tournaments.
“FDH Bank has raised the bar of football sponsorship. No other bank has partnered football in such a serious way. In the past, K25 million was sponsorship for entire competition but now this goes to the eventual winners alone,” he said.
“This shows that football really deserves the best and not the leftovers. Finally, Malawi football has a father in this bank, which supports us in both the good and the bad times.”
Just when everybody thought the football cup sponsorship was all the bank could bring on the table for sports in 2019, the financial institution came up with a mouth-watering K360 million three-year netball sponsorship that will see K300 million going directly to Malawi Netball Queens, K45 million towards a national netball cup and K15 million towards Netball Association of Malawi (NAM) administration.
The development means that from this year, the Queens will get K100 million annually for activities and incentives while the netball cup and NAM will receive K15 million and K5 million, respectively.
During the sponsorship launch at Amaryllis Hotel in Blantyre, NAM president Khungekile Matiya described the windfall as a big motivation towards realising the national netball team’s dreams of taking the number one sport in Africa and breaking into the top-four bracket in the world. Currently, the Queens are third in Africa and seventh on the global rankings.
Queens captain CarolineMtukule-Ngwira said, with the historic sponsorship, they will do their best to make the bank and the nation proud.
FDH Bank acting managing director then William Mpinganjira said they believe the financial backing would help to further improve sports standards in the country.
The latest football and netball sponsorships come on top of the bank’s K180 million three-year sponsorship for the senior football national team, the Flames. The bank also bankrolls grass roots football through the Zomba and Lilongwe Mayor’s Trophy to the tune of K10 million each.
