Players body sets terms
The Football Players Association (FPA) board of directors has said it will be getting an eight percent cut from gate revenue gross at organised games towards the welfare of players.
However, TNM Super League giants—Be Forward Wanderers and Nyasa Big Bullets—have expressed their reservations, describing the development as retrogressive.
According to FPA general secretary Ernest Mangani, the board of directors met a few day ago and agreed that the percentage would be enough in the 2018 season to cater for the welfare of players in the TNM Super League and national teams in terms of general insurance cover for injuries, medical aid, funeral, gratuity money at the end of their contract, financial literacy, professional education and collective bargaining agreement.
FPA directors include Malawi National Council of Sports (MNCS) executive secretary George Jana, Football Association of Malawi (FAM) president Walter Nyamilandu and Super League of Malawi (Sulom) president Innocent Bottomani.
“Emphasis should be made that we will be receiving eight percent of gross gate takings before distribution and percentages for revenue sharing will remain intact,” Mangani said.
“As such, the board has approved that each player will be required to pay K5 000 annual membership fee instead of at least K50 000 which was initially proposed.”
This means each Super League club will still be getting 25 percent from net revenue, the same as ground owners while FAM and Sulom’s take will be maintained at 10 percent each. MNCS will still get its five percent cut.
Mangani said they are, therefore, encouraging all teams to facilitate the process of submitting the membership forms to the FPA through him before kick-off of the 2018 season on April 14.
At present, among the 16 Super League teams, it is only Dwangwa United that has submitted a full list of their players in readiness for FPA membership and all the other teams are expected to follow suit before the new season starts.
But Wanderers’ chairperson Gift Mkandawire yesterday said the idea of FPA getting eight percent cut from gross gate revenue is a non-starter because that will add more woes to the clubs’ “already depleted collection”.
He said: “In the first place, it will be wrong for the FPA board to start imposing some things on us because we are already stressed. As clubs, we needed to have our input before such a decision was made because the ideas we are looking at are how we can increase our revenue.”
Bullets chief executive officer Fleetwood Haiya said while the initiative is beneficial to the welfare of local players, it would not be in their interest to join FPA as they already have a similar scheme in place.
“As Bullets, there is no point of joining FPA because we already have a similar initiative in place,” Haiya said.
“Moreover, as major stakeholders, who do the actual work on the ground, we continue to suffer while others continue to enjoy the gate revenue. Almost 50 percent of our gross gate revenue goes to other stakeholders and it would be a big setback to add eight percent more.”
