Audience Is The Commodity We Buy And Sell In Football Business, A Keynote Discussion With Football Marketing Consultant, Benson Chukwueke

Football Marketing Consultant and CEO, GreenHunters Sports International, Benson Chukwueke, Explain what he will do differently to grow the football industry in Nigeria...and Why He Is strongly recommending  commercialized football model.

"The football industry in Nigeria is lagging behind and require a clear vision for commercial growth. We cannot measure the success of the industry with our national team, where we always need to call up players abroad, because our domestic leagues are of such low standard. There's need to re-visit the football model in Nigeria."

1. A Model of Football In Nigeria
Every industry has some discernible  shape or form, defined by the ways in which organizations align. Sport or football is not different.

The way the football federation, league managment, club owners... align in this country shows Nigeria operate rather an older model of football,  aim at healthy living (to exercise the body; to keep fit) or to engage youths towards meaniful recreation.

The moment we find an outstanding talent, we immediately transfer him or her abroad...consequently, the potentials of the leagues are largely downplayed. Nigerian clubs cannot compete favorably  in continental tournaments.

So we lost our large audience to pay tv, which broadcast more competitive and interesting English Premiership as well as other top European leagues..

There is an urgent need to deliberately craft a commercialized football model. That would be the fundermental change I would want to bring into Nigeria Football. Football is now operated globally as a viable economic factor and we should align the industry in Nigeria.

2. Nigeria Media and the Promotion of Football.
Unlike hardware stores, football teams and leagues get free promotions daily in the newspapers, on the radio, on television and on the internet.

But these media outfits want to remain in business so they promote what majority of the audience will want to read, hear or watch.

 In 2018, for instance, the leading sports daily newspapers, Complete Sports published 10, 630 articles on the premier league games as against 2, 428 articles on Nigeria professional football league (NPFL)...and only 150 of those NPFL articles made part of the frontpage headlines. Usually NPFL articles are place on the inside backpage of the newspapers.

On the other hand, the leading sports digital TV station Supersports ran free 7, 980 Adverts of
 upcoming Premier league matches as against only 302 adverts of NPFL matches. These kind of impartial media free publishing or broadcasting are not comparative to inspire audience interest towards the Nigerian elite league.

A deliberately media resilience should be crafted to give NPFL programming more impetus. Media hypes are major tool use in building and retaining audience interest. And if I am incharge of football in Nigeria I will mobilize resource to major in building audience interest.


3. Understanding Why Audience is the commodity we buy and sell in football business
In modern sports marketing strategy individual stars are created and use to promote games. Then, team rivalry are used to capture and grow audience interest. If you do not understand the business of football you may think we are selling games to audiences. Not really! Audience is actuslly the commodity we buy and sell.

Whether it is sponsorship or perimeter advertising, endorsements or media right, we are trading audience interest on a football event for money. So it is like a game of numbers, the more audience your football event can attract, the more exchange power you have to place high price for interested corporate brands.

Leagues and other football events like NPFL that hardly attract audiences at the stadium or television has virtually no commodity to sell and cannot be in business.