The spokesperson of the Namibia Sports Commission (NSC), Givean Samulandela, has pleaded with Namibians to aggressively support local sports events the same way they flock in numbers to watch foreign games and matches across borders.
Samulandela was speaking at the MTC Branding and Marketing Indaba held in Windhoek last week, dissecting the topic of unpacking the brand of Namibian sport.
“It is not the work of the NSC alone; partnership and sponsoring are key, and reliance on the government shows that our sports industry is not sustainable because what if the government decides to stop funding sport?” he pondered.
He stated that the sustainability of sport should be across the board, and Namibians need to start consuming their own products.
“I can tell you right now that, a big number of people here don’t watch our games. But if we can use NFA as a case study, there was a phase when Chula Chula came into the league and the stadiums were filling up with numbers,” he recalled.
Samulandela added that there is a lot of support going to outside sports like the recent Arsenal and Madrid games.
“We need to bring that fever back home because there is no way that our sponsors are going to believe in our product if we, at home, are not consuming it,” he said.
The bone of contention when it comes to sport has always been infrastructure, with Samulandela stating that the country needs to invest in it so that, for example, the Brave Warriors can play at home.
“Also, football is not the only sport, we have athletics, cricket, and as we are here right now, we have a gold medal from the Paralympics in Paris, France, but we are not celebrating that because it is not football,” he noted.
NFA’s spokesperson Isack Hamata stated that sport is a unifier, more than any other sector.
“Sports gives us an opportunity to celebrate ourselves as Namibians, and when you take it outside the country, when you appreciate what people say about us – they usually say a very small nation with a big heart,” he mentioned.
One of the biggest threats to sports not thriving in Namibia is working in silos and not collaborating.
“We work beside each other and not together and I think there is an opportunity to build synergies, and we should leverage off each other. Why wouldn’t I want to sit with someone who is doing marvellous work in a sports code?” he asked.
Hamata said at the end of the day, people don’t do sport for themselves, it’s done for the country, “sport brings us together, it’s what makes us happy when we win and sad when we lose. It kills and destroys all political differences we may have.”
He noted that Namibia needs to start dancing to the tunes of sport and properly contribute to its branding because “we are far from becoming professionals and becoming a commercialised sports country. Some have tried and are doing it, others have not. Why are we walking past each other? We need to work together so that the country benefits from our efforts.”
-psiririka@nepc.com.na