NAIROBI, May 14 – Media rights partners, MP & Silva will make no further payments to Football Kenya Federation (FKF) to honour their Sh2.3b ($2.5 million) annual five-year sponsorship deal of the FKF-Premier League.
In a letter obtained by Capital Sport sent to FKF president, Sam Nyamweya and NEC Members signed by Chief Operations Officer Roberto Dalmiglio, the agency states it will not add to the USD833,000 (Sh80, 120,436, 020.54) they have paid out thus far to honour the contract.
“Therefore as mentioned above we consider remaining Minimum Guarantee for the Season 2015 equal to Zero. Any additional revenue exceeding the already paid USD 833,000 will be split 60% to MPS and 40% to FKF, in order to recover also the costs that MPS has sustained till now,” read the letter dated May 13.
Speaking to Capital Sport in response, FKF president Sam Nyamweya said the letter had not reached them expressing doubt about its authenticity.
“We do not have the letter, it has not come to us. We shall deal with this matter tomorrow (Friday) but what I can tell you is we have met our part of the contract.
“Everybody in the world knows which is the top flight competition in Kenya. We gave them a list of all the teams playing and how can anyone claim to sponsor a league he does not know?” the football chief told.
MP & Silva give a raft of damning reasons to pull the plug on financing the deal including; poor quality of the FKF-PL that is essentially second tier, lack of interest from the country’s free to air television stations, ambiguity of their broadcast arrangement for Harambee Stars and claims of forgery in their contract with the federation.
“The League that Azam is currently broadcasting is second tier in terms of quality. None of the Clubs that signed the attachment to the main contract are playing in FKF-PL, let alone one of the two big Clubs who’s participation had been promised,” Dalmiglio wrote.
“Due to the quality of the League no FTA operator and no Telco operator has considered to enter into any sort of agreement. No draft of an MOU between FKF-PL and KPL has still been provided to us.
“No official agreement related to the now called GoTv Cup has been extended to us, therefore we are not being able, at this moment in time, to provide FKF with an evaluation of the property, once expiring,” the firm further outlined.
The letter validated reports the copies of the contract the federation presented to the firm were dubious with the COO citing it a main reason to withhold further monies.
“There is a clear discrepancy between the attachment to the contract between us that had been sent via e-mail and the original hard copy received by courier; the press has been talking about a “forgery”; we just are aware that a discrepancy needs to be explained,” he stated.
On Harambee Stars, MP & Silva uphold; “There is no clear evidence from your end, although many times requested, that the Qualifiers to CAF competitions and to the World Cup are at your full disposal as, declared under your own liability in the contract.”
The letter however, maintains the firm is not severing its ties giving room for the federation to iron out the issues before their agreement can be sustained or any other action, legal or otherwise, taken in default.
“Should the situation be normalized starting next season we will consider returning to the original terms of our agreement. We remain at your disposal to discuss this in more detail,” Dalmiglio concludes.
“We have been renegotiating the agreement, that is true but that does not mean we have failed anyway to honour our end. There is no indication our five-year partnership will be terminated,” Nyamweya outlined.
In March, FKF signed reported Sh202m (USD2m) shillings three-year broadcast deal with Tanzania based Azam TV to beam FKF-PL’s games live and produce magazine programmes, a competition the marketing firm now terms unsellable.
Harambee Stars are due to set off their 2017 Afcon qualification campaign next month against Congo Brazzaville with previous games under the CAF banner televised via their media partners Sport 5.
