Broke Leopards to roll out funding raising plan
AFC Leopards officials will on Friday morning unveil a marketing and public relations team mandated with securing alternative funding for the club this season.
This move comes hours after the top flight outfit formally received a communique that terminated the long term relationship with sponsors Mumias Sugar Company Limited, as exclusively revealed by Nairobi News last weekend.
The message – which ensures the outfit will miss out on about Sh 20 million – was delivered to the club chairman Allan Kasavuli, his secretary general George Aladwa and organizing secretary general Timothy Lilumbi by Mumias Sugar Limited Company’s Managing Director Coutts Otolo, who was accompanied by the Director of Marketing and Corporate Affairs Margaret Makhungu Mukoba at the Mumias factory offices earlier this week.
“We now have to act fast and look for funds to avoid a crisis. This club cannot go under, we will not allow that,” Kasavuli, who now has to find an extra Sh 2.6 million monthly to pay the players and technical bench’s salaries, told Nairobi News.
PAYBILL NUMBER
The marketing team will be chaired by the club’s former vice Chairman Walter Onyino, who is remembered for negotiating a Sh 23 million sponsorship deal with Pay TV channel Zuku three years ago.
The Zuku deal was however nipped in the bud by the league organizers who at the time claimed it infringed on a separate existing deal with the league’s broadcast sponsors SuperSport.
The club will also be launching a Paybill Number 196464, through which the club fans and well wishers can send their contributions.
Leopards is one of the most successful clubs in Kenya having won the coveted top flight league title on 13 occasions, alongside other honours.
The first team, which is currently under the tutelage of Croatian coach Zdravko Logarusic has made a good start to the current league campaign, winning twice and drawing one of its three league matches so far.