The New Game Plan

FUNDING AND FINANCING

The Jamaica Football Federation is currently experiencing significant financial difficulties. As at July 31, 2003, the Federation had current liabilities of approximately $18.4 million with current assets of approximately $9 million resulting in a working capital deficiency of approximately $9.5 million. This means that as at July 31, 2003, the Federation needed to secure funding of at least $9.5 million to pay its creditors.

The situation has deteriorated significantly since then. At mid-September the current liabilities stood at approximately $29 million with little or no increase in current assets. To survive, the Federation has been delaying payments to creditors and borrowing. This situation has continued and is getting worse due to the lack of profitable games, a major source of funding for the Federation.

The finance committee has been unwilling or unable to make any recommendation to deal with the substantive issue. The JFF is instead seeking to have unpaid statutory deductions written off while continuing to owe millions to clubs, players, government and suppliers of goods and services.

SHORT-TERM FUNDING

Short term funding will have to be obtained immediately. Members of the winning team will immediately commence discussions with the government in order to obtain some additional short term funding to alleviate the current situation.

Failing this, the possibility exists that we could obtain short term funding by using the JFF headquarters building as security on a loan.

There is an urgent need for the institution of policies which would lead to cost savings in several areas, including telephone expenses, overseas travel, advertising and promotions, incentives and local match-related expenditures among others.

We will institute a policy governing player compensation, thus ensuring that players are paid within a reasonable time while guarantee that unreasonable demands at inappropriate times are not made on the JFF.

We will be improving certain operational procedures making them fully automated.

FINANCE COMMITTEE

We have received verbal confirmation from three senior, very high-profile private sector individuals of their willingness to serve on a finance committee which will be central to our administration.

One of the critical roles of the committee will be to review all substantive financial agreements.

MEDIUM TO LONG TERM OBJECTIVES

We are developing a credible four-year plan. This plan includes a budget which will take into account revenues generated from World Cup (qualifying games slated to begin as early as June 2004) sponsorship, match fees, grants, and the US$400,000 to be received under the FIFA Goal Programme.

This plan will include the development of appropriate player training facilities for the national teams, on lands donated by the government. The funds will be invested in appropriate risk-free instruments (Government of Jamaica securities) to generate additional income from which the required amounts are disbursed for the project. We will also be addressing policy issues as it relates to the following:

a)      Improving funding to the parish associates and confederations

b)      Paying of referee fees

c)      Funding for youth programmes

1.         Improve Funding to Parish Associations & Confederations

Sponsorship is critical to the success of the JFF. As at July 31, 2003, the federation received approximately $37 million in cash sponsorship and an additional $16 million of sponsorship in kind. We intend to improve on this significantly. Our aim is to maintain existing sponsors while courting new ones.

2.         Payment of Referee Fees

The increased funding will allow the development of professional referees, paid by the JFF. This would provide necessary breathing space for many clubs which have to underwrite payments to the referees. Individuals should be able to look forward to a career in refereeing. This would have the effect of improving the standards of the game locally.

3.         Funding of Youth Programme

(Under 13, 15, 17 & 20)

We believe this programme is of critical importance to the development of football in the future and should be funded fully or in part by the JFF. Properly framed, this can result in increased sponsorship revenue. We anticipate this programme is of such importance that securing grants will not be an extremely difficult task.

OTHER POLICY ISSUES

Among the other policy issues to be addressed is the free flow of financial information between the JFF, the directors and the public. Every effort will be made to improve transparency.

1.  A football pool is being proposed to handle the operational expenses of the JFF. The proceeds from the pool would be used to run the JFF secretariat and to provide funds for the operational expenses of the various associations. We do not have any figures on the quantum of funds which would be generated from such an exercise but strongly believe that this could spark even more interests in the various competitions as people who bet on games would have a financial interest in the results. This would translate into larger live gates and also more television viewers.

2. We believe proceeds from the pools could help in professionalising the local football business by providing resources to build the kinds of facilities that will make the clubs profitable and the players comfortable.

Top-flight facilities can be the platform from which to launch Caribbean wide club competitions with the appropriate media linkages.

We need to create regional stars who will remain here. We cannot do this without paying our players properly.

Efforts should be made to generate earnings from merchandising both at the national and club levels we contend that not enough was done to make meaningful financial gains from our trade and service, marks which can be significant sources of revenue.

We envisage more sponsorship as a result of the rebranding of Jamaican football. We need to frame our objectives properly so that Jamaicans recognize that we have a long-term strategy and are not into quick fixes.

TICKET SALES THROUGH LOTTO OUTLETS

One area of grave concern to us is the management of gate receipts. In keeping with our philosophy of being transparent, we will be entering into negotiations with holder of the national franchise to have them sell tickets for us.

Such a move will be instep with our efforts to introduce greater levels of transparency to the operations of the JFF. We think that such a relationship could also result in increased sponsorship coming from the gaming community.

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