Times Of Swaziland: WE WON’T PULL OUT - MTN ASSURES PLE

WE WON’T PULL OUT - MTN ASSURES PLE
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Chris Dlamini on 27/01/2022 08:48:00


EZULWINI – At least talks for next season’s MTN Premier League sponsorship
package have been initiated as of last week.
Put aside any panic because it is not yet time for that – at least according
to MTN Eswatini are sponsors of the country’s top leagues, the elite and first
division which are covered by the amount of E6 million. The mobile
telecommunications giant yesterday declared that pulling out of football
sponsorship under the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) was not in their plans.
This is despite the company cutting its budgets and strings with some sectors
they sponsored in sports and entertainment due to the fact that globally, MTN is
now moving towards exploring innovative models to leverage sponsorships for
increased return on investment.
leverage
“Due to the global and economic challenges the world faced as a result of the
COVID-19 pandemic, it has become key to find new avenues to leverage our
sponsorship portfolio to maximise returns. Our partnership with the PLE remains
invaluable and our commitment to making the lives of our customers who are avid
football fans a whole lot brighter remains. The first thing is that we signed a
E6 million package for the current season. Secondly, we opted for the one-year
agreement to allow us enough time to finalise sponsorship leveraging plans to
maximise the return on investment. Our talks when we signed the one-year
agreement were to find a sweet spot, through subsequent discussions, to enable
us as parties to agree on which initiatives we can explore to drive product
uptake and create excitement in the market for clubs and local football fans,”
explained the company’s  Brand, Communication and Sponsorship Manager Lando
Dlamini.
This was during the league’s sponsor’s breakfast meeting with the media,
which involved sports and entertainment editors and reporters at their
headquarters. This was the second meeting between the stakeholders whereby ideas
and means to work together and improve the game under the MTN banner are shared.
“For us, the one-year renewal talks delayed slightly as we were trying to iron
out the kinks for leveraging plans, however, we were faced with time constraints
in concluding the talks and were running out of kick-off time. As you may recall
this warranted the postponement of the league kick off twice. It was then that
we decided to sign the one-year agreement and let the game begin while we
continue with bilateral talks for the future leveraging initiatives. It was by
no means a sign of pulling out,” said Dlamini.
The ‘onus is now upon both MTN and PLE’ to finalise leveraging plans that
will be implemented beyond our popular Yello Sundays. “So far, our engagements
with PLE are going smoothly. We are hopeful that by February we will have
finished our leveraging plans with the PLE and we’ll update you again on the
exciting initiatives and promotions we have in store for football fraternity and
customers. Among some of the initiatives, the PLE and ourselves had discussed
was perhaps open voting lines for fans to pick their Player of the Year, Coach
of the Year and so on, however, all of these initiatives are still in discussion
and at proposal stage,” he said.
invested
MTN Eswatini has already invested nearly E50 million to the PLE since the launch
of the first package of E300 000 in the 2002/03 season. Meanwhile, also present
in the meeting from MTN Eswatini was the company contact person for the media,
Nondumiso Mkhwanazi, who came in the place of departed Mandla Luphondvo as well
as Sponsorship and Events Coordinator Bachazile Thwala. Representing this
publication was Sports Editor Lwazi Dlamini, Acting Weekend Sports Editor Chris
Dlamini and Entertainment Editor Nondumiso Msibi, while also represented was
Independent News and Eswatini Observer. Electronic media is not yet included in
the quarterly meetings but it was explained they would join in the near future.