TNM Super League rookies Ekwendeni Hammers say they have given up on the purported K220 million five-year sponsorship deal with Agrizone International Trading (Azit).
Hammers and Azit announced the sponsorship deal in February, but the club has only received K1.5 million.
The club’s patron Gift Mkandawire said in an interview that they were supposed to be getting K44 million annually, but the sponsor has not lived up to the agreement and the team has survived the season through the goodwill of fans and well-wishers.
He said the sponsor has not been forthcoming despite the club’s efforts to follow up on the sponsorship and they see no future in the deal.
Said Mkandawire: “To be honest, the situation is bad. The sponsor has been elusive. A draft agreement was prepared and they [Azit] said they would take it to their lawyers to go through it and then revert after two weeks. But it has been months now and there is nothing.”
But in an interview, Azit chief executive officer Matthias Bonongwe claimed that the deal did not materialise because Hammers failed to meet a key condition of the agreement which required the club to be involved in boosting sales of the company’s products at its Mzuzu branch.
“Since we reached an agreement in February last year, the sales at our Mzuzu Branch have not improved. We were expecting sales of not less than 300 bags of fertiliser a week, but that is not happening,” he said.
However, Hammers general secretary Benjamin Thole dismissed the claims, insisting there was no such arrangement.
“There was no such condition. That does not make sense and he should learn to be honest,” he said.
Marketer John Kawamba said it was wrong for the company to set a sales target for its support to the club because sales operations are not done by the club.
“What the club can do is just market the sponsor’s brand so that the sales can be easier. It is, therefore, unfair for the company to associate its support to the club with sales targets because sales operations are done by the company itself,” he said.
Despite the sponsorship woes, Hammers have performed beyond expectations in their top-flight debut season. The team is in the semi-finals of the FDH Bank Cup. In the 16-team TNM Super League, they are eighth with 37 points from 26 matches, safe from relegation.
