Our soccer has to grow beyond our borders

If you look at the mobile phone war between Vodacom and MTN you’ll realise that there are very important learnings for our local Premier Soccer League(PSL). Vodacom had a 6 months headstart over MTN and people thought that this gap could never be breached citing a similar situation where Pepsi Cola has never failed to bridge the advantage that Coca-Cola had having started business years before Pepsi.

However, the Vodacom-MTN war has taken on a new spin. MTN is now a bigger company both in terms of subscribers and turnover. The decisive action was MTN’s willingness to adventure into the rest of Africa, particularly Nigeria which has a population of well over 120 million.

By the time Vodacom woke up to the potential growth opportunities in Africa MTN were long gone.

The PSL is currently experiencing a sponsorship boom in South Africa, no doubt about that. However in order for the local game to ever grow to scales similar to that of the English Premiership it has to expand internationally. Obviously it is ludicrous to suggest that we take on the likes of the Premiership and Spanish La liga head-on in terms of TV markets and fan-bases, which ultimately boosts merchandising aqnd brand equity.

That’s why the PSL has to follow the example of MTN – expand into the rest of Africa. MTN did not take on the likes of Vodafone in their overseas markets – this would have been foolhardy as they would have been annihilated. Instead they grew quietly in the backwaters of Africa and now they are an international brand of note.

The PSL has to follow the same strategy but because we are dealing with sport, the dynamics will have to be different. The first advantage we have is that we are African therefore we know Africans better than the Europeans, Asians or Americans. The first thing we would need to re-engineer is our soccer product. We have to make the rest of Africa stakeholders in our game and we can do this by using our newfound sponsrship-wealth to get the best young African players playing here.

Our clubs have to make sure that the best young Egyptians, Nigerians, Ivorians, Cameroonians, Malians, you name them, are all playing in our PSL. Nigerians will want to watch PSL games on TV if they know that their best young players are playing here. The same applies with the rest of Africa.

And we need to do what it takes to get this talent here as European scouts are always hovering. Because we are in Africa the environment is easier for a young talent to adapt to than the bitterly cold weather of England. We have to make sure that the deal includes bringing a key member of the young player’s family here, if not the whole family, and providing the family members with jobs so that the player has a support structure and therefore adapts easily. This is what the Manchester Uniteds do and this is what the Mamelodi Sundowns must do.

The investment in such a scheme is nothing compared to the benefits in the longer term. It is nothing compared to the transfer fees the clubs will earn from selling on the best young African talents to the great clubs of Europe and the additional TV income from a pan-African audience. This is the kind of thinking we need in order to be big fish in a bigger pond and if MTN can do it, our soccer can do it.