Renowned speakers at the inaugural edition of SportsProNigeria programme, an annual sports industry series held recently at the prestigious Lagos Business School unanimously agreed that Nigeria has an enormous capacity to provide a fertile ground to make sports a thriving industry in sub-Saharan Africa urging that more proactive instruments must to be harnessed to make it a reality.

According to Dr. Jim Pulcrano, in a paper changing the game, Nigeria as the Silicon Valley of African sports, said judging from the vast resources, human and material available at the feet of the nation, needless to say that it is huge income earner waiting to be astutely tapped.

Pulcrano, a visiting Professor and member of EMBA teaching team, IMD Business School Switzerland further wants sports to be seen purely as business enterprise and to effectively home work this time achieve that, administrators should sit back decisively for depth and real soul searching and come up with where they derailed and set the tone instead of being on order way round.

“When the needful are done, the system cleared of filthiness that hinders progress, sponsors will rush for the juicy appetising industry that would assist enduringly the speedily demand of their products and services by Nigerians through sports. Honestly Nigeria needs to tell herself the truth, know where her sports have comparative advantage and work assiduously towards hitting the goldmine. There are no bases pretending to be up there while it will prove hoax at the end of the day.”

On his part, Kevin Roberts, in a topic global sports economy, global impact of sports insists that the earlier Nigeria took sports business as the centre piece of her steady growth the better before dawn. He posited that countries with far less potentials have turned their sports around resoundingly into an industry and are harvesting gainfully today.

He restated the need for administrators to look more inwards and prepare depth blueprint that will see sports as money making venture instead just medal winning. He suggested that creativity coupled with honest dealings.

“Administrators should develop enough foresight to identify where their sports belonged to if it is local, national or international so as to set the focus right to maximise the gains for efficient delivery,” he said.

For Robert Mutsauki, executive director RM sports management and former technical director ANOCA, government subvention has made African administrator to be so lazy that they cannot plan and look other means to sustain sports to greater level. They are yet to realise that even the government fund is not even enough compared to what would have been coming into their coffers if they have trend the path of making sports wholly business outfit.

“They must brace up to create, and grab vibrant opportunities in sports marketing, woo corporate bodies, what do you offer them so they can full packages., by so doing you must have convinced them that the advertisements they place in the media does not give them enough mileage compared to theirs. Administrator must be dynamic in approach. Government has no business in sports business but can provide an enabling environment for sponsorship company to be doing legal business in the country,” he pointed out. Mutsauki predicted that sport is capable of becoming Nigeria’s second largest foreign exchange earner and employment of labour if turned into genuine business.

•Photo shows a group of Nigerian athletes during a competiton.

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