Nigeria Professional Football League (NPFL) delegation made up of Directors of the League Management Company (LMC), Nigeria Football Federation (NFF) Board members and 11 NPFL Club Chairmen and Managers have been challenged to set clear commercial and sporting objectives for their club with a plan for achieving the vision.
The advice came at a session when Valencia CF of Spain played host to the NPFL delegation to the NPFL All-Star LaLiga tour Wednesday morning at the club’s 93-year old Mestalla Stadium during which the club’s Commercial and Marketing Director, Peter Draper conducted a marketing seminar, presenting the club’s marketing vision as well as touching on global marketing practices.
Drawing from his experience in sports administration and marketing, Draper began the session by stating that the starting point in club management rests with understanding and appreciating the simple things football clubs and sports associations ought to be doing and declared that the club chairman or chief executive officer is the number one salesman in the organisation.
Draper said the global challenge encountered in running clubs is in getting the balance between meeting the needs of the playing personnel (players and coaches) and that of the administration.
The Valencia official also spoke on areas such as proper investment in playing and training structures to encourage the best talents to sign up for the club and pointed out that this requires good scouting team, training facilities, personnel, attitude/ relationship building with the players and perhaps their families.
On being informed during the interactive segment that 80% of the clubs in the NPFL are sustained by state funds to the tune of up to 90% of their revenue needs, Draper urged them to seek ways of improving the volume in the remaining 10%.
