Pay-TV service provider StarTimes has revealed the reasons that informed their decision to terminate their sponsorship contract with Football Kenya Federation Premier League.
The Chinese company announced, on Thursday, they had reached a decision to end the seven-year contract they had signed with FKF in September 2020.
Failure To Deliver
StarTimes has now detailed specific reasons why it was no longer tenable to carry on with the obligations of the contract thus the need to pull out.
"The execution of the said agreement has been wanting, occasioned by different acts of commission or omission including but not limited to the following," a letter obtained by GOAL and signed by the company's public relations manager Alex Mwaura, said. "And failure to deliver a number of scheduled broadcast fixtures."
"Despite prior confirmations, several fixtures including one Mashemeji derby [a fixture between Kenya's most supported clubs AFC Leopards and Gor Mahia] in the 2020/21 season were not delivered.
"Frequent changes to confirmed fixtures: We have had to work with an unstable fixture that has constantly changed, at times on short notice. This has led to a lack of cohesion and promotion of wrong fixtures which ultimately translated to limited awareness of broadcasted matches.
"Persistent stakeholder wrangling within the football fraternity: The persistent acrimony between the governing body and its key stakeholders among them media and top tier clubs has negatively affected the league’s brand affinity.
"Being a subscription broadcaster who leverages content popularity, the constant confrontation has led to limited uptake and viewership of the property as seen through monitored performance on our platform.
Tusker."Failure to honour agreed contract deliverables: This is seen in various forms including but not limited to failure to broadcast the weekly free to air (FTA) fixtures, providing the weekly magazine shows and acknowledging the media sponsor as the official broadcast partner across agreed platforms.
"Constantly putting the StarTimes brand into disrepute: The failure and/or delayed delivery of scheduled fixtures have exposed the brand to constant subscriber backlash.
"These among others have combined to make it almost impossible to have a return on investment through the sponsorship of the said property."
The development means the top-tier, which is set to resume on December 4 after suspension, has no sponsor remaining since BetKing terminated their deal in August 2021.