Stung by prevailing economic meltdown, Standard Bank Friday withdrew its K43 million football Knock-Out Cup sponsorship, ending an eight-year romance, thereby dealing a hammer blow to domestic football.<\/p>\n
In a statement released Friday, the bank cited changes \u201cin the macroeconomic environment and all the attendant business challenges,\u201d as chief reason for the pull-out, which left Football Association of Malawi (Fam) understandably worried.<\/p>\n
Fam general secretary, Suzgo Nyirenda, Friday confirmed that the bank broke the bad news during a meeting held on Wednesday in Lilongwe.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously, it\u2019s a blow as we have been relying on this sponsorship for a long time. We will respond through a statement,\u201d Nyirenda.<\/p>\n
Standard Bank\u2019s exit leaves Carlsberg Malawi Limited and TNM as the only sponsors for top-flight club football, which is a direct feeder to national football teams.<\/p>\n
With slightly over two months before the 2016 season, Fam is yet to publicise its calendar of events, hence there will certainly be anxiety in the football circles.<\/p>\n
Despite the pull-out, the bank said it was proud to have contributed to domestic football improvement, including in the senior national football team.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have been forced by these circumstances to become more introspective about how we think about continuing to build a sustainable business going into the future,\u201d added the statement.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a consequence, we have had to take a closer look at our revenue structure and potential, as well as our cost structure, and we have unfortunately found ourselves needing to make some uncomfortable decisions.\u201d<\/p>\n
Civo United are holders of the cup after they defeated Be Forward Wanderers 1-0 through Nelson Kangunje\u2019s late goal at Civo Stadium in October 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Stung by prevailing economic meltdown, Standard Bank Friday withdrew its K43 million football Knock-Out Cup sponsorship, ending an eight-year romance, thereby dealing a hammer blow to domestic football. In a statement released Friday, the bank cited changes \u201cin the macroeconomic environment and all the attendant business challenges,\u201d as chief reason for the pull-out, which left […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":18283,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18279"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18296,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18279\/revisions\/18296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18283"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}