PR must be important to GPL clubs

There was fury among ‘football people’ when Ghana’s Sports Minister Nii Lantey Vanderpuye made categorical statements bordering on the attractiveness of the Ghana Premier League. According to the Minister, the inability of the Ghana Football Association and other stakeholders to draw sponsorship to the league had made it a big failure.

A lot of factors can make a football league unattractive to a potential sponsor. The modern businessman is a lot more delicate and will consider a number of things before getting on board as a sponsor of a brand like the GPL.

It looks out for the profiles of the clubs and activities of their communication teams. That is how well the club is presented to the world.

One of the basic things a potential headline sponsor will do is to profile the football clubs in the league to be sure of what it’s getting into.
Football clubs in Ghana have, however, taken the importance of the Communication/public relations (PR) aspect of their setups for granted.

Unfortunately, the 16 clubs playing in the top tier of Ghana football have either had non-functional or non-existent websites or information portals to sell out information about themselves to the world.

A lot of the problems of Premier League clubs in the league could be attributed to ineffective PR mechanisms. Access to information about football clubs in Ghana is next to impossible.

For instance, in the buildup to match days, even the local media have struggled for information to preview games well ahead of time because club officials are reluctant to give away information about their clubs in the fear that their opponents could use that against them.

There have been instances where I have met up with some spokespersons of some Premier League clubs in the line of duty and confronted them over their inability to pick their calls or give information about a game and the response I got was that they had been asked by senior club officials not to speak. Sounds that simple!

It begs the question: What are the clubs hiding? And why aren’t they taking advantage of the new world order? PR has become the focal point of most successful organisations.

The case even becomes more complicated with clubs who do not have spokespersons, such as the case of Techiman City Football Club whose details seem locked between the CEO, Kofi Manu, and Team Manager Charles Ntim, who are uncomfortable educating fans and other stakeholders on the happenings in their club but would occasionally leak out information to media people they have special relationships with.

Kumasi Asante Kotoko, believed to be the club with the largest following in Ghana club football, had no website until recently when Communications Director Kwaku Ahenkorah proposed that a club of the stature of the Fabulous side needed to have a news portal. Even that is not functioning as much as it should. But the case is, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed is King.

Hearts of Oak struggled to put up a website but checks have proven it has not been functional for a very long time.

Credit must however go to Kwame Opare Addo, Accra Hearts of Oak’s PRO, and Gyan Mantey-Frederick, Media Officer of Inter Allies, who are almost always on hand to provide information concerning their various clubs, especially in the build-up to matches of their clubs.

But compare the situation here in Ghana to what happens in Europe. I bring up this analogy because ultimately it is the level we would want our game to grow to. No reporter or journalist really cares about knowing the spokesperson or PRO of Manchester United. Any communication about the club is channelled through the right medium, mostly through press statements on the club’s official website or its TV channels.

Interviews of players and managers are usually recorded weekly and placed on the club’s website, thereby giving no need to call any official or player on phone to speak ahead of a game.

Modern trends have made it impossible for clubs to shy away from placing communications and public relations ahead of everything. Ghanaian football clubs must begin to understand the importance of public relations, how it can help create a positive image for an organisation, and invest in it.

This way, we could create a better vibe for our league, thereby making our efforts to attract sponsorship less stressful. First impressions, like they say, count a lot.