SPORTS MARKETING
Future Of Sports
Marketing In Kenya? It’s
The Numbers Stupid!
By Richard Wanjohi
R
iddle me this – it belongs to you,
but others use it more than you
do? back down even after the affected firms
threatened quitting the country, it says a
lot about a sector. progressively, the proposition to air or
associate with your sport becomes a labour
of love.
In the last one week, how many times have
you bet on your favourite team’s result? Of
course if you are from a certain North
London team, the odds are almost always
stacked against your bet. How many
of these teams in the different football
leagues do you know by heart by now? Work with me still, look at the major media
outlets. Their main driver for growth in
audiences is the use of sports. At a local
level, I can count about 4 media houses
with sports-specific content. While we are
not yet at the level of our brothers down
South to develop conglomerates housing
sports media properties, it’s not too far
before a media complex comes up. To bring this closer home we saw what
happened to Kenya’s rugby 7s in the past
12 months. It tugged my heart to read a
Tweet about a Kenyan rugby fan some
weekend to the effect that “I used to wake
up in the wee hours of the morning to
watch Shujaa play … these days I barely
know when or who they are playing”.
There are many fans who can identify with
this statement.
Mid-this year, as I was shuttling in town
via Uber from one side of town to the
other, I accidentally opened the glove
compartment, which had the drivers
‘betting book’. While it may have been
common parlance to shrug it off, what
surprised me most was the amount of
detail jotted for each league, team as well
as their playing times.
Who are the top 10 media spends in the
last 12 months? How many of these firms
would you name top of your head? For the
government to introduce a tax and not
With the closure of the regional offices
of one of Africa’s biggest sports media
properties, it may have signaled the dearth
that was to come for sports in the co