By Denis Turyahebwa
Kampala: According to FUFA Communications Director-Ahmed Hussein, the federation and its members intend to produce and broadcast high quality live and recorded content of lots of the football events in a bid to generate more resources for the game from the associating brands but also to beat the COVID-19 lockdown that has restricted fans from stadiums.
According to Hussein, in the past, FUFA was not able to sell the commercial rights of the FUFA Women Competitions and Regional Promotions but had sold the commercial rights of the Uganda Cup at 300m UGX (85,000 USD) to Stanbic Bank and 132m UGX(37,000 USD) to Plascon.
”FUFA has not been able to sell the Broadcast (Media) rights of the FUFA Women Competitions, Regional Promotions and the Uganda Cup,” says Hussein.
He adds, ”Considering that when COVID-19 SOPs required to play matches without fans, FUFA thought it was prudent to take the games to the sitting rooms of the fans. The objective was to keep the football competitions and clubs’ brands alive as we navigate COVID through continued association with the fans.”
Hussein also says that the federation has taken the strategy to add value to the rights and make them ready for consumption.
”Step by step, FUFA will package the Uganda football product from just selling the right to be filmed to a high-quality electric or electromagnetic or optical signal of live and recorded football events. This is what many Ugandan brands can and wish to buy not sponsorships,” says Hussein.
FUFA mouthpiece also says that in doing the above, ”definitely we are stepping on some business toes that have benefitted from FUFA’s failure hitherto to occupy our place on the table.”
Hussein says the football stakeholders and entire football loving public should remain assured that FUFA and its members, as has always been the case, know which buttons to press to deliver this dream.
”Live Ugandan Sports on Television and Digital Platforms is a game changer that will radiate Uganda Sports industry into an economic sector employing Ugandans, paying taxes and used as import substitution,” adds Hussein.
Whereas raising value and hence more revenues is the main objective, Hussein says FUFA want to achieve other objectives such as; extend viewership of the FUFA Competitions to Homesteads, Offices, Bars, Schools and all other places where masses of people collect., build the brands of FUFA, Competitions, Clubs, Coaches, Players and Referees, use the media content for; performance analysis of the players and referees, archiving, education, second opinion on matters missed by the match officials and disciplinary actions.
FUFA through its partners has been able to produce and air live a total of 133 matches that included the FUFA Big League Qualifiers, Uganda Cup, FUFA Women Super League and FUFA Women elite League broadcast on Facebook live, UBC, Star TV and BBS TV.
