Federation of Uganda Football Associations (FUFA) has officially come out to categorically announce they have received an offer from Tanzanian based Television company, Azam TV.
The Ugandan football governing body has released an official statement;
FUFA has received an offer from Azam Pay TV Limited for the commercial properties owned by the federation and clubs. This is in line with the objective to explore any avenues of bringing in resources to club football.
The Tanzanian based Pay Television has reportedly tabled a Ushs 1.28 Billion (at least about Ushs 80M per club) offer to the 16 Uganda Premier League clubs per season – a mind boggling offer compared to Super Sports’ anticipated Ushs 68M for each club.
Super Sport has not televised any Uganda Premier League match live this season nor dispatched any coin to each of the football clubs after 2 clubs (Vipers and Sports Club Victoria University hesitated to sign the deed of adherence)..
They have however released a fraction of money to the match officials and secretariat running the league.
It remains to be seen how FUFA will appropriately negotiate the deal with AZAM T.V limited whose football team, Azam FC visited Uganda for a series of build up games with Ugandan clubs.
In the statement, the Ugandan Federation does not rule out any chance of an eminent AZAM take over.
Consultations and discussions are ongoing with relevant stakeholders
Almost all Uganda Premier League teams have felt the financial pinch with several club staff going months without payment of allowances and other wages.
Some teams had to devise means of cutting cuts – by reducing on the number of training sessions, staff retrenchment polices were applied and others simply sought borrowing of resources with a hope of clearing when the sponsorship money is finally delivered.
At Entebbe F.C, Kira Young F.C and Sports Club Victoria University for instance, players have gone more than 5 months without payment of salaries.
Even at institutional teams as Simba Football Club, some players are paid ‘peanut salaries’ as low as 100,000 for 30 painful working days.
The AZAM T.V official approach to FUFA extinguishes the ‘corridor talk‘ surrounding the AZAM-SUPERSPORT-FUFA-CLUBS vicious cycle of debates concerning the league sponsorship and the affairs of the clubs.
***UPDATE: Super Sport TV has responded with a 6.5BN offer.
