Skyy FC President Wilson Arthur has encouraged local football clubs to consider farming as an opportunity to overcome some of the challenges the Coronavirus pandemic has forced on the Ghanaian football sector.
With decimation threatening most football clubs as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Arthur has challenged club owners and administrators to be innovative and devise ways of improving their situation.
The Ghanaian Football has been rendered dormant for the past 5 months following a government directive to ban all forms of public/social gatherings with football affected as a result.
This has resulted in clubs and other stakeholders missing out on revenue generated during match days.
With the financial situation of clubs looking direful, Wilson Arthur has suggested how the situation can be helped; farming.
He believes farming can help clubs raise money from sale of produce and also produce food for consumption to help cut cost.
He disclosed in an interview with Skyy Power FM Sports, that his club Skyy FC would consider farming as a way to financially prepare for the next football season.
“By way of funding and financial preparation Skyy FC would consider starting Skyy Farms, a lot of the vegetables take few months to harvest, so if I have the resources, I wouldn’t mind cultivating a rice farm making sure I have enough of rice to cater for my team for the entire season,” he noted.
Wilson Arthur has warned that due to Covid-19 badly affecting the global economy, it is going to be hard for corporate entities to cough up huge amounts of money to sponsor clubs and the various football competitions.
He has therefore urged the football stakeholders to look at identifying specific sponsors for their various needs/brands.
“We have to be innovative, by breaking down the cost of running teams into parts.
“For example if you have a team bus, you can work on fuel sponsorship, you can even do food and beverage sponsorship, water sponsorship, so you can put your expenditure into parts and get bits of sponsors for all, to ease the burden of club financing.
“This is very important because they way and manner business is moving in this COVID 19 situation it would be difficult to get one big sponsor to absorb all your cost, so this is the time to be very innovative,” Wilson Arthur concluded.