But for Enyimba, Kano Pillars and a couple of other Nigerian Premier League teams’ venues which attract sizeable spectators, most Nigerian Premier League matches record embarrassing and near zero spectatorship for a country whose followership of football can only be compared to religion.
The lack of followership and patronage of our domestic league is impacting negatively on our National teams, particularly the Super Eagles. It has made us rely almost solely on bench warmers and rarely used foreign based professionals, without looking inwardly on the abundance of soccer talents scattered in schools as well as streets of Nigeria. In-fact at a point in time, Nigeria was rated second best to Brazil in terms of soccer talents, but the story today is such that Nigerian players no longer attract good patronage and obviously lack the needed creativity as well as technical depth.
The best National teams in the world such as Germany, Spain, Holland and Italy rely heavily on materials from their well-organized domestic professional leagues. In most cases, the bulk of the players ply their trade in one or two clubs at home, thus building a nexus of strong footballing culture and chemistry.
From the foregoing, it is only natural and expedient on us to develop our domestic league by building spectators’ interest in the league and subsequently creating a Nigeria Premier League brand the way the English and Spanish FAs strengthened theirs to the lure of the world.
Some of the ways through which we can attract spectators to our league venues include, but not limited to strategies such as: reducing government ownership of the clubs by including spectators and fans’ stake in the clubs, ensuring that our local clubs get involved in franchising/ merchandise as practiced by clubs in Europe. What this means is that the Nigeria Premier League clubs should own shops where jerseys and other club brands are sold to their fans and people living in the towns/cities where the clubs are based.
There should be wide-spread and affordable media coverage. The coverage should include weekly match previews and highlight shows, which must include interview of coaches, players and fans.
Players’ welfare should be enhanced to boost their morale and professionalism, while ticket prices for access to match venues should be very affordable and handy, considering our economic realities. Match venues, particularly the pitches should be upgraded to make it more media friendly, while adequate security at match venues must be placed on high Premium.
Professionals plying their trade in our domestic leagues should be given opportunities in all categories of our National teams. If spectators know their soccer heroes in the National teams play in the domestic league, it will serve as incentive to visit league venues.
For the start, administrators of our league should work out game fixtures in such a way that matches do not clash with games in European leagues like the EPL and Spanish La Liga. Fixing the games for Friday evenings after work won’t be a bad idea, even as our transportation system needs to be adequately improved to boost commercial activities.
The likes of Aliko Dangote who are interested in buying Arsenal in England can invest such money in our league and the sky will be our limit in football development.
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