Sports Council pushes for gate revenue sharing reforms

Malawi National Council of  Sports plans to introduce a minimum gate revenue threshold from which the council and Football Association of Malawi (FAM) can get their shares.

Sports Council board chairperson Sunduzwayo Madise in an interview said coming up with a threshold will ensure football clubs benefit more from their sweat.

At present, the council and FAM still get five and 10 percent shares, respectively, no matter how little the gate collections are.

Madise said this is not a fair arrangement as clubs end up going home with little from the already little revenue.

He said: “If we share the money in a way that can suffocate the clubs, then we are not achieving our goal of uplifting sports standards in the country.

“There must be a limit on how we get the gate revenue share. We need to get it only after a certain threshold has been reached.”

Madise explained that the council will in the next few days arrange a stakeholders’ meeting over the same.

A number of TNM Super League matches this season have been grossing less than K150 000, yet the council and FAM still got their cut.

For instance, a match between Kamuzu Barracks and Red Lions at Civo Stadium in Lilongwe on May 15 grossed K119 000 with the teams receiving K37 000 each.

The Sports Council board chairperson added that the sharing percentages also need to be reviewed so that more money should trickle down to the clubs and the players.

“We will soon hold a stakeholders meeting strictly involving the Sports Ministry, the council, FAM and Super League of Malawi [Sulom] to sort out these issues,” Madise explained.

Gate revenue sharing systems are designed by Ministry of Sports through Sports Council, which is the government’s sports regulator.

However, Madise said although, they have the authority to change the sharingsystems, council does not want to impose on the stakeholders.

He said: “We want to give negotiations a chance. We want to get other stakeholders’ views on this.”

Sulom president Fleetwood Haiya welcomed the move.

“This is really a welcomed development. As you know, Sulom or the clubs mostly rely on the gate revenue for survival while Sports Council gets its budget allocation from the government and FAM gets funding from Fifa. Therefore, there must be a way of maximising revenue for the clubs,” he said.

FAM general secretary Alfred Gunda yesterday was not available for comment on Council’s suggestion.

However, the association last year indicated that it was ready to cede its share of the revenue if Sports Council leads the way.