How Big Is the Super Eagles Brand In World Football - Sport Marketing Expert Explains

How Big Is The Super Eagles Brand In World Football? - Sport Marketing Expert, Benson Chukwueke, Explains the Commercial Value of the Nigeria National Team

Super Eagles is an enigmatic brand; you can hardly predict what the team could do in any game... and such mysterious reputation makes Nigeria tick in world football. Some games quickly comes to mind, Nigeria Vs Italy FIFA 94 World cup; Nigeria Vs Spain FIFA 98 World Cup, Nigeria Vs Brazil Altanta96 Olympic games... which are generally referred to as the "Nigerian Miracles."

In 1994, Nigeria got their highest Fifa ranking 4th in the world and that surprised the football community. A team from Africa making waves, that created a lot of brand awareness. Then in 1996, against all odds, the Nigeria Olympics men soccer team "Dream team" won gold medal in Atlanta. Of course, the dominance of Golden Eaglets at the U16 level has also brought Nigeria to the fore in world football.

During what we may call the golden era, exploits of some star players : Rasheed Yekini, Nwankwo Kanu, Emmanuel Amunike and Victor Ikpeba became Africa's best, Jj Okocha won BBC African player of the year... and other players like Daniel Amokachi in Everton, Sunday Oliseh in Juventus, Finidi George in Ajax and Real Betis drew worldwide attention to the Nigeria national team.

Super Eagles may not be the preferred brand when fans are selecting games. Nigeria isn't that a big team like Brazil, Argentina, Germany or Spain, but can hold their own against these world class teams.

Nigeria is playing a lot of games and doing well, I think it's been great, with more consistent results Nigeria can take up the brand position of the Dark Horse, just as Belgium and Croatia lately. That means playing against big teams their games can be that attractive and sold out.

The relationship with Super Eagles and the fans has been a lot better.  Beating Cameroon during 2018 world cup qualifiers and Argentina in an international friendly ahead of the 2018 world cup endeared the team to fans...which led to a lot of commercial opportunities. For example, Nike sold over 30 million units of Super Eagles shirts to fans ahead of the world cup in Russia.

Recently, Nigeria won third place match in just concluded African cup of nations and had since then got decent results in international friendlies against Egypt and Ukraine.

Gernot Rohr is managing the team so well and we hope they keep performing well. That's good for business.

Presently, one of the commercial  floors is not having a star player in the Super Eagles team. For example, Egypt have Mo Salah, Senegal have Sadio Mane... That is another key issue with Nigeria. We don't have one key star player. I think we have a fantastic team, and I am not trying to say that in a bad way, I am just talking from a marketing point of view, from a business side.

If Egypt go somewhere, they have Salah as a star attraction. If Argentina go somewhere, they have Messi, Brazil have Neymar, Portugal have Ronaldo. But we don't have it yet.

We used to have Kanu, we used to have ' Okocha. Those are the kind of players that make it easier for a marketer to sell a team because people want to see them.

John Obi Mikel is a good player but he didn't get to that iconic level., not Victor Moses nor Ahmed Musa. We are hoping players like Alex Iwobi, Samuel Chukwueze, Wilfred Ndidi or even Kelechi Iheanacho could grow to become world class stars.
.
Once Super Eagles keep winning matches, have big stars, get into the top 10 or top 5 of the FIFA rankings then you get better commercial opportunities. That's it.