Taofeek Babalola
CHAIRMAN League Management Company (LMC) Shehu Dikko and former Director General of the National Broadcasting Commission (NBC) Danladi Bako are sharply divided over the recent sponsorship deal struck by the league organising body with UK- based company Redstrike Sports.
LMC, had last week entered into a strategic and investment partnership with Redstrike Sports to commercialise the Nigeria Professional Football Club (NPFL).
Speaking on Sportsville on Channels TV, Dikko said the Redstrike deal would pump more money into the Nigerian League via television to take the league to the next level.
“With the Red Strike deal we would have our own production capacity where we can produce our games and put it on television and put on other platforms as well,” declared Dikko. “At the end of the day we will see more of our games on television, we will see more money come in and more importantly we will see more professionalism. This deal is remarkably different.”
But Bako in a separate interview said that the NPFL quality is not good enough to produce contents that are required for the satellite TV, advising the LMC to make NPFL brands more attractive since bad products won’t sell on TV.
“I have said it several times, first of all your players and your league must be TV friendly,” Bako said during a programme on Sports Salsa. “When your players and league are TV friendly, the referees are in good shape and everything is in order then you have a product. But right now we don’t have the product that is sellable.”
But the 63-year-old foremost broadcaster further said: “Those projections by the LMC sound nice but for me they are just projection on papers, $200 million whatever, all of that is paper talk.”
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