Growing Super Eagles brand

Super Eagles
March 30, 2024

The biggest brand by which sports can be showcased to the corporate world is football largely because of its huge followership. Therefore, when the game enjoys tremendous sponsorship as a result of its meteoric rise in global soccer events, those firms that can find space in the soccer marketing sphere can back the next popular sport to football until a vacuum is created.

Since Nigeria’s splendid debut outing at the 1994 edition of the senior World Cup in the United States where it exited in the Second Round after being defeated 2-1 by Argentina, Nigeria‘s national team has been unable to improve on this feat despite a pilgrimage of attendance in the last 30 years.

Had Nigeria grabbed the opportunities that fell on her lap following the country’s remarkable outings at the Atlanta 96 Olympic Games, sponsorship deals, especially the international brands would have been the elixir for growth for the beautiful game here. The country received several requests for international matches with easily the best team, Dream Team 1, captained by Nwankwo Kanu at that time.

But an all-knowing sports minister preferred to savour the sweetness of the Atlanta 96 Olympic Games gold medal feat than to reap from this achievement through friendly matches with high cash to boost the revenue of the perpetually broke Nigeria Football Federation (NFF). It is this unbridled interference from the government that has kept sports, especially football on its knees because no firm would want to do business with any government knowing its bureaucratic tardiness.

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If Nigeria had honoured those international friendlies, 28 years ago, we would have understood the dynamics of sport being a business and not mere leisure, which is how we perceive it here. Top firms offered to host the replays against Brazil and Argentina. The cash and business platforms that the two matches would have attracted, 28 years ago, would have made the Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) an international brand, which is solvent.

That is the prize we have paid with that senseless decision, even though it is only during football matches that creed and ethnicity are thrown overboard by Nigerians. Even the criminals abandon their evil trade to cheer our national teams to victory. It doesn’t matter if Nigerians have to stay up late to watch such matches. Soccer is the opium of the people here.

Recall that the Super Eagles missed its chance of lifting the Africa Cup of Nations diadem back-to-back in 1996 in South Africa but for the idiotic submissions by the late Sani Abacha’s jackboot government, with words rife that the players were compromised to accept the dastardly decision not to participate at the 1996 Africa Cup Nations held in South Africa which Nigeria would have attended as the defending champions, having won it in 1994.

Some of the Eagles of ’94 were merchants, they mortgaged their career path on the altar of filthy lucre during the jackboot era.  Is anyone still worried that our football is still in diapers, over 63 years after the country’s Independence?

Nigeria is perhaps the only country in the world where governors host international matches only to throw the gates open on match days for cheap popularity. The governors’ defence of their decision to host games is always on the excuse of fulfilling the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) to their people in the state, this defence is very weak. In other climes, big matches serve as one of the revenue generation platforms that such a country’s FA uses to showcase the marketing outlets and celebrate existing sponsors. The ambience around the match venues in saner climes encourages firms not doing business with such FAs to key into the federations’ programmes, especially those whose products and services are targeted at the masses, albeit the people who throng the stadium to see games.

The football world watched how Brazil earned a deserving late penalty kick to secure the 3-3 draw against the Spaniards inside the Real Madrid Stadium Tuesday night. A mammoth crowd watched the match from the start to the finish, with everyone connected with prosecuting the game seeing it as a business. Whilst the game was on, the commentators told listeners the number of spectators inside the stadium. Also, right inside the stadium, it was clear to those who wanted to find out if the game was a box office fixtures.

You neither did not have to persuade any club official to find out how much their clubs were worth nor did the Spanish quarrel with the full disclosure of all that transpired within the stadium to the world by the commentators.

It was quite sickening to read that the face of the Super Eagles, the Technical Adviser, or is it Head Coach is being linked with primordial sentiments such as what was reported in some national dailies on Tuesday. This writer is miffed that the Chairman of the APC Governors’ Forum, Hope Uzodinma, could be reported in The Guardian online as rooting for the employment of Emmanuel Amunike as the next Super Eagles coach, probably because the former African Footballer of the Year comes from Imo State. This shouldn’t be the case, Mr. Governor, with due respect, sports is a field for the best. In fact, sports reward excellence, not mediocrity which is what such insalubrious moves by Uzodinma portend. Anyway, it shows how busy our leaders are.

Picking the right coach for the Super Eagles to prepare for the 2026 World Cup can benchmark how the game would look in the future. But there exist some meddlesome interlopers who make it their duty to advise the NFF. One of such interlopers emerged during the week threatening to sue the federation if a local coach wasn’t recruited as the next Super Eagles coach. This is my problem with elites in Nigeria. Elites whose children school overseas are arguing against ‘wastage’ on foreign coaches. Hypocrites. These elites do business with foreigners. In some instances, these interlopers employ foreigners to do jobs in their businesses which could be done by Nigerians. Colonial mentality.

They are the forerunners of controversies who have kept football on its knees instead of proffering ideas to lift it up to attract good corporate patronage which would make the NFF solvent, not what it has always been – a stool for mystery. Funding for the NFF  is best achieved when the federation isn’t associated with needless controversies such as these. The corporate firm won’t associate their goods and services with ventures perpetually enmeshed in crises.

The net income before income tax and social security contributions generated by the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (CBF) in 2022 amounted to nearly 143.5 million Brazilian reals, or around 28.4 million U.S. dollars based on the exchange rates of May 31st of that year. This figure represents an increase of roughly 108 percent versus a year earlier.

The Football Association (known by its abbreviation The FA) is the governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey, and the Isle of Man. Formed in 1863, it is the oldest football association in the world and is responsible for overseeing all aspects of the amateur and professional game in its territory. The Football Association’s net worth in the last five years is as follows:

The Football Association Networth 2024     $2.82 Billion

The Football Association Networth 2023     $2.54 Billion

The Football Association Networth 2022     $2.26 Billion

The Football Association Networth 2021     $1.98 Billion

The Football Association Networth 2020     $1.69 Billion

This is according to Statista Research Department on Aug 25, 2023, the revenue of the German Football Association (DFB) from 2017 to 2020, by segment.

In 2020, sponsoring and other marketing brought in roughly 163,098 Euros worth of revenue.

Professional football in Spain is a sociocultural event that significantly contributes to the Spanish economy in terms of demand and supply. In economic terms, during 2013, professional football generated more than €7.6 billion, including direct, indirect, and induced effects, representing 0.75% of the Spanish GDP.

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