Super League of Malawi (Sulom) General Secretary, Williams Banda, has disclosed that they will seek a legal opinion over TNM\u2019s decision to withdraw Super League sponsorship, insisting that there is a running contract until December 2017.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are going to reflect on TNM\u2019s letter [from Chief Executive Officer, Douglas Stevenson,] versus the contract. The agreement is a legal document hence we want to seek clarity if TNM has terminated contract renewal talks or the current contract. We need to understand this as the Competitions and Fair Trading Commission said their determination does not affect the current contract,\u201d Banda said.<\/p>\n
He said the rolling four-year sponsorship was renewed in April 2012, a year before the expiry of the previous deal, hence the negotiations which TNM suspended a fortnight ago. TNM suspended the negotiations following the commission\u2019s determination that the contract breached fair trading practices.<\/p>\n
According to the agreement, either party can terminate the contract over a serious breach after a notice of 30 to 45 days, a thing which the mobile service provider did not follow.<\/p>\n
The contract provided TNM with the first right of refusal and where one party felt that there was a breach, the agreement provided for arbitration as the last resort. TNM officials yesterday were not readily available for a comment on Sulom\u2019s latest position.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Minister of Sports, Youth and Manpower Development, Henry Mussa, has disclosed that he will meet TNM officials to appreciate the problems that led to their sponsorship withdrawal.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am arranging for a one-on-one meeting with the officials so that we can see how best wecan solve the issues that forced them to withdraw. I believe that all is not lost. Being a Malawian company, I am sure they will understand our concerns and consider coming back,\u201d Mussa insisted.<\/p>\n
TNM started sponsoring the league in 2006 to end a year-old sponsorship drought that saw the government step in with prize money for 2015 season.<\/p>\n
TNM was sponsoring the league to the tune of K80 million per season and Stevenson said they had invested K2.6 billion in the game over the years.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing the meeting on Monday, 20th March, where Sulom and Fam was to get clarity on the ruling by CFTC on the future of the contract with TNM, CFTC has broadly maintained its ruling and therefore, TNM has made the decision to fully withdraw from sponsorship of the Super League and let other potential sponsors take part in the continued development of the sport in Malawi,\u201d Stevenson said in a press release.<\/p>\n
The withdrawal has left the elite domestic league in a state of uncertainty with two weeks to go before its scheduled kick off.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Super League of Malawi (Sulom) General Secretary, Williams Banda, has disclosed that they will seek a legal opinion over TNM\u2019s decision to withdraw Super League sponsorship, insisting that there is a running contract until December 2017. \u201cWe are going to reflect on TNM\u2019s letter [from Chief Executive Officer, Douglas Stevenson,] versus the contract. The agreement […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43015","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43015","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=43015"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43015\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43055,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43015\/revisions\/43055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43015"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43015"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.times.mw\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43015"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}