BY: Egbomuche Felix
On Thursday, August 24, the fixture list for the new Nigeria Premier Football League, NPFL season will be released. A season that was set to begin on August 26 but has now been moved back a fortnight.
A season that organizers have guaranteed will see an unprecedented 304 games streamed to viewers courtesy of the deal struck between the NPL board, their strategic partners GTI and broadcaster, Propel Sports Africa.
If the league kicks off on its new date, it will be the earliest start to an NPFL season since at least 2005 and also the closest the league would have been to align with the FIFA Calendar in that period.
Also, there’s a 50% increase in the prize money for this season from the 100 million naira that Enyimba got as champions two months ago.
All of these moves by the new board make for good reading and should have fans and lovers of football in the country excited but that’s not necessarily the feedback you get out there.
There’s still that feeling of “we’ve been here before” among fans and even journalists and they have valid reasons to feel that way.
NPFL Season: Game-Changing Tv Broadcast and A Slow Start
This isn’t the first league board to tease long-term TV deals and other promises. In fact, some fans had active subscriptions when the last TV arrangement folded.
The broadcast deal, which is worth around 5 billion naira annually for 10 years, has been advertised as the ‘game changer’ but the early signs don’t seem to suggest much of that.
With just over three weeks to the first kick-off, the AI cameras are yet to be installed at some venues, operators are just getting trained, we’ve not had the opportunity to see the output of the tech and there’s been no proper explanation on how the 8 games will be broadcasted weekly when only 10 stadiums have been approved. How about the two games that are not on Propel’s roster each week, how do fans see them?
There are still a lot of unanswered questions about this TV arrangement this close to the start of the season, and for a deal that has been tagged a game-changer, these feel very much like what we are used to.
Away from broadcast, the league still doesn’t have an official sponsor and GTI looks set to carry the burden of operation again this season.
It’s a 10-year partnership they have with the NPL Board so maybe it’s still early days to start asking when they intend to start getting their return on investment but after seeing the brands that supported the first edition of the Naija Super 8 preseason tournament, you might begin to wonder who they had been talking to.
NPL and The Media
There’s also the ‘small’ matter of Media. “Small” because how else do you describe their lackluster approach to media?
For a league that supposedly kicks off in less than a month, there’s been little or no buzz on television or radio across the country while the official social media accounts are not active.
Feelers are that some sponsors are skeptical about getting on board this project because of the lack of buzz on socials but if the official handles of the league have made only 4 posts midway into August, you know where exactly the problem lies.
The Challenge Ahead of the New NPL Board
The new NPL Board which is a hybrid of the Interim Management Committee from last season that did considerably well within the short time of appointment has now had a season’s experience under their belt.
The expectations are now slightly different from what it was last year and they will be held to much more higher standards now. Some of the things that were ignored during the interim regime will now be heavily scrutinized and comparisons will now be drawn between them and their predecessors.
The projections on paper are good and the future looks bright but the actual approach to the new season so far is giving throwback vibes and as they say in pidgin our parlance, “Sunday wey go good, na Saturday you go done dey know”.
In usual fashion, the kick-off day and fixture release date have already been changed, television arrangements are still shaky, the league still doesn’t have a sponsor and the buzz around it is still almost nonexistent. The early signs are not the best but hopefully, this Saturday doesn’t determine our Sunday.