GHPL failing to attract sponsorship because of size of economy - GFA President

GFA President, Kwesi Nyantakyi, has refuted suggestions that the poor quality of the league and inability of the association to market the local league is the reason why the association struggles to find sponsors.

According to him, the local league is lacking support just like other key institutions and sectors of the economy.

He attributed the unwillingness of business and investors to pump in money into the league to the inability of the Ghanaian economy to accommodate them.

Kwesi Nyantakyi noted that to date, the largest amount of money that has come in through sponsorship was a $3 million deal sign with telecommunications network Glo for a 5-year period.

“The GPL is just a microcosm of the Ghanaian economy. The police service, the media or the people in private sector are not different from what pertains in the GPL. What is the size of the economy and how much sponsorship can we even generate. Historically how much sponsorship have we generated from the Ghanaian economy. The biggest sponsorship we ever got was from Glo in 2008 when we signed a 5-year deal with them and that was for $3 million a year” he stated stressing that “if we compare the situation with Europe, we will be making a serious mistake, then we will be comparing apples with oranges” he noted



Citing recent world record transfer fees to buttress his point, GFA President explained that the European economies are large enough to attract investors from different parts of the world unlike that of African economies. These investors can afford to buy players at huge cost because of the returns they hope to make.

He revealed that in Africa, “the best league in terms of money, riches is the South African leagues. The South African league is among the top 10 in the world. It is because of the size of the South African economy. TV rights alone fetch them $100 million from multi choice.”

The GFA president wondered why critics fail to compare the size of the economies of African countries and European countries and urged them to instead focus on doing a peer review between Ghana and other African countries.

“Why are people not comparing the African economies to European economies. People are quick to compare the state of football in Ghana to the EPL but you will compare the economy of the UK to Nigeria or even Ghana or Liberia or Cote d'Ivoire. I think we must do a peer review. We must compare ourselves with our fellow Africans.”

He, however, observed that despite having more investors and better sponsorship deals than Ghana, the South African league cannot compare itself to the Ghana Premier League in terms of quality and talents.

Kwesi Nyantakyi made this assertion in an interview to discuss the issues arising from the WAFU competition hosted in Ghana on UPfront on Joynews