My Opinion: Fufa Decision for Women’s Super League Games to be Played During Morning Hours Due To TV Element
It started as a leaked information on social media at the start of this week, when the FUFA 3rd Vice President Owek. Florence Nakiwala Kiyingi, instructing the FA’s CEO Edgar Watson to change the women’s super league games time to favor TV broadcast.
Many including me didn’t take it serious until yesterday, Wednesday when the federation released a letter to Clubs informing them that the games were shifted from the original 4PM playing time to 10am in the morning.
The main reason was to see that women football especially the super league gets airtime on FUFA TV.
Was FUFA right to do so and are they taking the right path?
While appearing on Real Sports Show at Gugudde TV today, Thursday, Rines SS Women’s football club, one of the ten clubs in FWSL, Daniel Masembe revealed that they were also caught unaware, they as Clubs CEOs were never consulted about the change of the time and even they never sat with the federation to discuss about the TV issues.
True we need these games to be on TV for Brand promotion and exposure while targeting potential sponsors but it’s also directly and hugely affects the lives of clubs and the external stakeholders (fans), surely the clubs will rarely get the fans they have been persuading for a while to come watch their games live.
Their gate collection they have been planning to get this season will be totally off, because expect no fans to come for a league game at 10am even at that time the TV viewership will be low since many will be too busy.
It’s like FUFA when making that decision, they never considered or forgot that during morning hours, christians are in churches, so they will either respect the directive from FUFA or their Creator.
Late communication or poor planning, it’s either FUFA never had it in mind that they are to broadcast many of women football on their TV because in earlier fixtures, there was no indication that such and such a game will be live on TV and even the last meeting they had with stakeholders, two days prior to the league kickoff, they never mentioned anything like future changes.
Extra costs due to change of Time, for starters, though FUFA is the official sponsor of the league, these clubs do not get any funding from the federation apart from the prize money for the winners, that means, clubs do incur all costs 100%, they already made prior arrangements for the season, booked the grounds for specific time, for Example Asubo-Gafford Ladies do hosts from Kampala Quality Ground Kisaasi, a ground that’s used by many, which means if Asubo wants to use that ground using another client’s time, Asubo has to pay for that time to use the ground.
Another case, if a club is traveling from Kampala to Soroti for Olila game, it has to travel much earlier than planned, meaning if your target was to set off late in the night and spend only on accommodation and the following day’s breakfast and lunch, then that club will be forced to travel early and incur the costs of supper which were not in the planning budget.
My suggestion:
100% we all want the game on TV, but before pushing something since we are in a democratic world, consultation, discussion should be the key. Let FUFA sit with the clubs and decide together what’s better for the game.
Let FUFA be open to the clubs that we are covering your games for TV, but here is the arrangement, financially a club will benefit in this way when it comes to image rights.
We all know, world wide TVs that pay for image rights do dictate the time at which a certain game shall be played, but what happens to the other fixtures which are not live on TV?.
I think, since one game will be broadcasted per day, then let these other games which are not on TV be played on the earlier communicated time.
Let the coming of the tv in the game be of more good than harm.
Kayiira Jackson aka Omuzibu Mugwabakyala