NPFL, Afrinvest partner for digital, revenue growth

Afrinvest has deepened its partnership with the Nigeria Premier Football League to drive digital transformation, strengthen commercial capacity, and position Nigerian football clubs for sustainable revenue growth.

The commitment was reaffirmed on Wednesday during the NPFL–Afrinvest Media and Marketing Workshop in Enugu, where media officers and marketing heads from all 20 NPFL clubs underwent training on branding, digital visibility, sponsorship attraction, and fan engagement.

The workshop, themed ‘The Role of Marketing and Media Officers in Generating Wealth for Professional Football Clubs’, focused on the need for clubs to move beyond total dependence on government funding by building stronger digital platforms, generating reliable data, and creating commercially attractive brands.

Speaking at the event, the NPFL Chief Operating Officer, Chief Davidson Owunmi, challenged the clubs to embrace digital transformation, warning that inadequate data and poor online visibility were preventing the league from attracting major commercial partners.

“After the broadcast rights today, the next money-spinning or revenue-generating resource is data. We need to tell ourselves the open truth today. We have ongoing contracts, but do you know what they ask of us? ‘What is your data? Where is your data for the league?’ We don’t have it,” Owunmi said.

He emphasised that every club must contribute high-quality content and statistics to enable the NPFL to build a robust central database.

“We need our clubs to be visible. We need your presence in the social space. We need all the clubs generating data because the NPFL only archives what you generate. If we have 20 active Premier League teams generating data from their clubs, it makes our own website very rich,” he added.

Owunmi further urged the clubs to strive for financial independence, stating that relying solely on government allocation was no longer sustainable.

“You cannot just depend on the government continuously. A dead media department is a dead club. A dead marketing unit is a dead club. We want our clubs to be healthy financially. Enough is enough. You cannot be doing the same thing all over again and expect a different result,” the COO noted.

Also speaking, the Manager of Afrinvest’s Enugu Office, Emmanuel Eleojo, explained that the investment firm’s support for Rangers International and its collaboration with the NPFL were anchored on the philosophy that football can only flourish when backed by sound financial management.

“For us at Afrinvest, internally, there is this philosophy we call ‘Finance Meets Football’. That is how we have tagged our intervention with our partnership with Rangers International and now the NPFL. The success of the Nigerian football league is not really only about what happens on the pitch, but also the strength of those behind the institutions and clubs playing on the pitch,” Eleojo stated.

In his remarks, the General Manager of Rangers International, Amobi Ezeaku, commended both Afrinvest and the NPFL for championing initiatives aimed at securing the financial future of Nigerian football.

“I appreciate Afrinvest for agreeing to sponsor this workshop that is about to change our financial status as a league. Let us look at football with an open mind. We want to see the clubs’ jerseys all over the country. Media officers and marketing directors should be our backbones in terms of revenue generation,” Ezeaku said.

Delivering a presentation titled ‘Monetising NPFL Clubs Through Marketing, Sponsorship and Brand Investment’, one of the lead resource persons, George Isitua-Onukwu, harped on the need for clubs to adopt a structured and time-bound approach to commercialisation.

Isitua-Onukwu advocated the development of a 12-month commercial calendar with clearly defined deadlines for renewals, briefs, and reporting reviews to build brand confidence.

“Clubs without a structured calendar for renewals, activation briefs, and reporting are, by definition, always reacting. People wear clubs when the club represents something they want to express,” Isitua-Onukwu added.