Super League defending champions, Big Bullets, have revealed plans of changing their name after landing a milestone five-year partnership deal with Nyasa Manufacturing Company (NMC) worth K500 million.
Bullets’ chairperson, Sam Chilunga, confirmed in an exclusive interview that the club was working on the modalities of changing its name from Big Bullets to Nyasa Bullets.
“The name obviously will be changed because they have to use our brand. Very likely it will be called Nyasa Big Bullets or NMC Big Bullets.
We are just trying to get a legal opinion on the usage of the name, Nyasa, because we know there is Nyasa United in the lower league. We didn’t want to be seen like we are using their name,” he said.
Prominent lawyer and football administrator, Trouble Kalua, said there was a possibility that the club could be registered as Nyasa Big Bullets if all procedures were followed.
“By the time I was leaving Bullets in 2011, the club’s name was not registered. There was only Bullets Holdings Limited which was a limited company.
The club was just a subsidiary of the company,” he said.
“But there could be an obvious problem with the existence of Nyasa United. Bullets have to ascertain whether Nyasa United is registered. If it is registered, it is hard to get a new similar name registered. But in football, teams could have similar names with small distinguishing details. The governing authority approves minor distinguishes to approve a new name.”
Kalua said it is from this premise that in Europe there are teams such as Manchester City and Manchester United, Atletico Madrid and Real Madrid and AC Milan and Inter Milan playing in the same leagues.
Super League of Malawi (Sulom) treasurer, Tiya Somba- Banda, said the league’s constitution does not deter clubs with similar names from playing in the league at the same time.
There is no problem with that. The clubs’ names must have something distinguishing them. They could not have totally similar names,” he said.
One of Nyasa United’s founders, Chimango Munthali, said the club is not registered at the Registrar’s office and the name has no connection with Nyasa Manufacturing Company.
“Since the club was established to cater for former players, the name Nyasa United was decided to be used to reflect on the players’ past playing careers,” he said.
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