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ROPER'S PERSPECTIVE by Garnett Roper
Good Cash Plus deal, but …The sponsorship by Cash Plus of the National Premier League in Jamaica will change local football forever. The sponsorship, which is for J$150 million over three years, will give money directly to the clubs which have now formed themselves into an association, the Premier League Clubs Association (PLCA).
This is good news. It has been some 12 months in the making and has come about not a day too soon.
Two Jamaicans are to be commended for having put in the hard work over the 12 months. They are former Jamaica Labour Party (JLP) leader and still the chairman of Tivoli Gardens Football Club, Edward Seaga, and Tank Weld CEO and deputy chairman of the Arnett Gardens Football Club, Chris Bicknell.
The sponsorship by Cash Plus of J$50 million per year replaces the sponsorship by J Wray and Nephew, which was J$23 million per year. Of the J$23 million, approximately J$6 million went directly to assist the premier league clubs with operating and administrative expenses, while the remainder supported the Jamaica Football Federation in its management of the league. In the new Cash Plus arrangement, J$40 million will be distributed among the 12 clubs in the league.
The PLCA will operate with each club getting almost J$3 million per year of resources to pay salaries and provide for training and nutrition and generally lift the level of resources available to the clubs. This will go a long way in enhancing the viability of the football clubs in the league. More importantly, it will lift the levels of the poorer clubs at the bottom of the premier league. The league has two clubs that could be described as being cash rich. Harbour View Football Club and Portmore United have both sold players and have generated significant revenues from the sale of those players. There are two or three other clubs that have fairly generous support from Good Samaritan types who assist the clubs to make salaries and access equipment and training. Generally speaking, the remaining seven clubs barely survive, and it is little wonder that three or four teams dominate the league each year.
The injection of cash to each club in the league will go a long way towards lifting the standards of the club’s management and also will provide a fillip for the football as a whole.
More sponsorship
In addition to the Cash Plus sponsorship, other sponsors have already started to come on board: This past week Nike representatives came to Jamaica to tie up a deal not merely to supply the official ball for the league, but also to provide gears and boots for five teams. Seven teams had already signed previous long-term arrangement with Addidas for gears and boots, so only the other five teams were in a position to benefit from the very lucrative Locker Room/Nike deal.
One also gathers that negotiations are in an advance stage to get television and radio broadcast rights sold to TVJ.
That deal is likely to fetch perhaps another J$20 million. Coca Cola is also likely to come on board with sponsorship for the under 21 league. This is the first time that any sponsorship is being contemplated for the junior/feeder teams. This augurs well for the future of football in Jamaica.
Changes made to the format of the premier league will not only lengthen the season by a month, but are also likely to make the league more competitive and entertaining. The changes will see the league following the pattern of the Scottish League. There will be four rounds instead of three rounds. In the fourth round, the top six teams will compete among themselves and the six bottom teams will compete among themselves. This will pit teams which are more evenly matched against each other and offer the best opportunity for keenly contested matches.
My interest in the injection of cash by Cash Plus in the premier league is two-fold: The first has to do with the community development potential of football in Jamaica. Football is a grass roots sport. It is played on every corner and every open lot, as well as on manicured places. It has an enormous following in Jamaica. The premier league has managed to attract and sustain enormous community support throughout the years. Any growth in the development of football stands immediately to impact on communities in a positive way.
This is not the first time that announcements have been made concerning the league that have raised expectations and optimism. One remembers the halcyon of Rene Simoes and the Reggae Boyz, especially when we qualified for the World Cup in France. Football was going to change the face of Jamaica for good. It did not. What is different this time around is that the injection of cash has come with a re-organisation of the league by creating an association (PLCA) in which the clubs have a direct say over their affairs, along with a cash injection. The cash injection is far from adequate; it will require about J$20 million per year to make a club relatively comfortable. However, it is a step in the right direction.
The clubs are now in a position to generate commerce at the community level with the gates receipts generated from improved attendance at matches. There will also be the revenue from broadcast rights and the sale of paraphernalia over time. Perhaps the greatest opportunity will be that a newly re-organised and well-structured premier league will afford the best players an opportunity to do what they do best. One also expects that players will be sold to international football clubs. The English football leagues and the US MSL, for example, are likely to buy our local talents and generate even greater revenue.
Downsides
But there are downsides to all this. There is discussion elsewhere about the lack of certification of young males and their under-performance. One needs to understand the push factor: Men have opportunities to generate wealth that have little to do with certification and football is one of them.
Football is not the only one. The recruitment of skilled workers like plumbers and electrician and masons to the Canadian market has started to change the wealth-generating potentials of these skill areas in a way that might even distort prices in Jamaica. A plumber on the Canadian job programme can earn C$30 per hour. In a six-month stay in Canada he would be able to earn about J$2 million. Football can generate multiples of that for real football talent. The National Premier League therefore stands to be a real outlet for the personal and social development of youth at the community level. It stands to have a multiplier effect.
A real opportunity has presented itself for social investments to be made in community facilities. Community courts, football fields and stadiums, as well as cricket pitches, will go a long way to enhance the competition and improve the quality of life at the community level. What has been done for Waterhouse, Arnett Gardens, Boys Town, Harbour View and Tivoli with stadiums built in those localities, needs to be repeated at all the other clubs if we are to take the country to the next level.
The second area of interest has to do with the sponsors themselves. Cash Plus appears to be a scheme with a difference. This facility, I put it no differently, has managed to pay returns of 10 per cent per month to investors for more than the last 18 months. It has also begun the process of purchasing a number of major tangible assets, including Hilton Hotel in New Kingston, Drax Hall in St. Ann, Mainland International and has expressed interest in the 30 per cent of the shares of CVM TV and Hot 102 which are owned by Neville Blythe and, as far as I know, it is in discussions for the takeover of Nationwide News Network.. Has the company completed any of these deals or is it still conducting due diligence?
It has obviously treated the premier league with priority, thanks to the negotiating skills of Edward Seaga and Chris Bicknell. It has bought a lot of very good publicity with the league. Fifty million dollars per year has purchased a lot of faith in Cash Plus, and they will at least be able to continue to attract new deposits for a while to come.
The fact that Cash Plus has bought such enormous fan support with its cash injection into the National Premier League could become a source of pressure for the government to settle its case with Cash Plus through the Financial Services Commission (FSC). The FSC has been seeking to regulate Cash Plus and has taken it to court to determine whether or not in order to do the type of business it does, it ought properly to be under the regulatory control of the FSC. There is a similar case with OLINT, which is next of kin to Cash Plus. Certainly the political administration could not afford to shut down Cash Plus or do anything that might trigger a run on it, since it will have done so much for national football.
There are those of us who believe that despite the enormous gesture of goodwill (as self-serving as it may be) that Cash Plus has made by the investment in football, it is unsustainable. It may buy time with the positive image-building exercise, but sooner rather than later, the chips will be called. One is not sure that the state, even if it wants to, will be able to do anything to recover the principal for the local savers and investors.
But let us make hay while the sun shines. Good has been done for football. Community development will be stimulated and community expression will be enhanced. More people will earn 10 per cent for the time being. One wishes the PLCA and the Cash Plus investors all the best and let us hope that the little nursery rhyme does not prove to be true in this case. “Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall. Humpty Dumpty had a great fall. All the king’s horses and all the king’s men, could not put Humpty together again.”
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