Sportswear outfit manufacture Nsejjere Sports have announced that the champions of the 2014/15 Southern Region Football League will get a prize package of K 7.5 million.
The firm’s representative Jacob Chikoya disclosed today at a Press Conference held at the Chiwembe Technical Centre in Blantyre that the whole package is at K10 million.
According to the breakdown, the champions will get K 1.5 million in prize money, two sets of uniforms, valued at K1.5 million, for use in the super League and K 4.5 million worth of replica merchandise for sale to help the champions raise money for Super League survival.
The runners up will get K 750,000.00 while the third placed team will get K500, 000.00.
“We are only sponsoring the prizes for this season. We felt obliged to help the teams earn something at the end of a long season. We were impressed with the proposal from the League and their vision. We want to help create a brand and commercialize Malawi football. After the end of the league we will then sign a proper long term agreement,” said Chikoya.
Chikoya also said the panic created three weeks ago when the sponsorship deal was announced in their absence was not necessary. When SRFA announced that Nsejjere are new sponsors a lot of questions were asked on the validity of the claim as Nsejjere were not present to confirm.
“We gave them the go ahead to announce the sponsorship in our absence because we knew we had committed to the cause,” he said.
FAM general secretary Suzgo Nyirenda thanked Nsejjere for bailing out the country’s oldest league.
“We don’t take the sponsorship for granted and it will go a long way in promoting football at regional level. It is our plea to the league to safeguard the sponsorship,” said Nyirenda.
SRFA chairman Raphael Humba, who used biblical stories for the better part of his speech, said the deal has proved all the doubting Thomases wrong.
The league will conclude on the 8th of March 2015. The title race is between Surestream Academy and Cobbe Barracks, who both have two games to wind up their campaigns with Surestream leading Cobbe by four points.