A theory goes that one of the issues that scuppered the plan to lure English superstar David Beckham to Spanish giants Barcelona was that there was going to be conflict of interest because the club and player punted rival cellphone companies.
It is old news now that Beckham ended with Real Madrid. The moral of the story: choose your cellphone sponsor carefully, you don’t know how badly it might affect your dreams.
South African football seems to have learned that lesson very early, and with Vodacom seems to have struck a deal that will ensure there will be happy returns for the sport and its dreams.
The cellphone company is one of soccer’s biggest backers, sponsoring local powerhouses Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs, Bafana Bafana, the national women’s team Banyana Banyana and the under-20 side Amajita.
The sponsorship goes beyond soccer, beyond sport, because Vodacom bankrolls rugby’s Vodacom Cup, the Super 12 and the Tri Nations, as well as the Cheetahs and Eagles teams — and the Felicia Mabuza-Suttle talk show on e.tv.
But Vodacom’s most ambitious plan yet must be the putting of its name, and money, behind the bid to bring soccer World Cup 2010 to South Africa.
Vodacom’s corporate affairs executive Mthobi Tyamzashe says the sponsorship of the game of millions is not a charitable act but a business imperative.
‘Vodacom identified sport as a vehicle to be used as a driver of sales. We do not classify sport as a social responsibility but as a business deal,” said Tyamzashe.
He said research companies had shown that soccer had a following of 87% of the population, making the sport an obvious vehicle for a corporation that wanted to increase its brand awareness.
Vodacom, SABMiller, First National Bank, Supersport, BMW and Anglo American are some of the 17 national and transnational companies that have thrown their weight and cash behind the effort to bring the World Cup to South Africa.
Tyamzashe says Vodacom’s bid is not just about sport.
‘There is an analogy that I like. When [Cape Town] was bidding to host the Olympic Games Minister [of Trade and Industry] Alec Erwin said we do not just want the Olympics for the sake of it. We want it to help develop the country. We want it because it would help develop infrastructure where it doesn’t exist.
‘The soccer guys have done all sorts of feasibility studies and tell us that hosting the World Cup will create 129 000 jobs — granted that some will be temporary.
‘Through the huge expenditure that will follow, such as the building of stadiums, it could help bring those who are outside the mainstream of the economy [back into the mainstream].
‘South Africa is a relatively successful country even if only 20% of the population is involved in economic activity. How much more developed it could be if we extended that figure to 60% or 80% of the population.”
Tyamzashe said the deal with the World Cup bid was in cash and in kind. The bid company, its administrative staff and ambassadors have access to phones, cash to run the office as well as to the company’s expertise. The sponsoring companies are entitled to have a representative on the bid company’s board of directors.
The assistance to the bid company will be rolled out until 2010 when the world championships would hopefully be held in South Africa.
‘Fifa [soccer’s world governing body] wants a guarantee that the country can provide a communications infrastructure, pre the event. Many countries have lost the bid because they could only provide those guarantees after they had won it.”
The other reason that Vodacom is involved is that after its relatively long association with soccer, it would have been unthinkable if it were not there.
Tyamzashe says some companies who are not traditionally involved in soccer would have smelt a rat had Vodacom not come aboard.
In the long term, Tyamzashe hopes that the continued association with the game will change the perception that football is riddled with administrative chaos. And to kick-start what he reckons is the momentum the sport needs to fulfil its potential.
‘Steve Tshwete [the late sports and later safety and security minister] liked saying: ‘We are not interested in a wheelbarrow, which only moves when you push it. We want something that has a momentum of its own.’
‘That’s what we also want for soccer. We don’t want [the World Cup] to be like the circus that comes to town and three days later there is no sign that it was ever there,” said Tyamzashe.
‘I think that soccer has moved from that perception [of inherent strife] and we are approaching an era where it is a viable area of investment that in itself raises the stakes.”
But with Vodacom being a telecommunications company and soccer being the game of billions, their synergy was inevitable.
Says Tyamzashe: ‘Soccer has the potential of speaking all languages. In Africa there is hardly a country where soccer is not played. We see it as advance publicity where we do not exist, and where we do, to get more.”