Football Kenya Federation is reportedly set to sign a multi-million deal with a Chinese-owned broadcasting company, Startimes, to air the ongoing FKF-PL matches.
According to sources close to the development, both parties are already in talks. The sponsorship will see the pay television broadcaster support the top-tier league after it earlier terminated its Sh110-million-per-year deal with Football Kenya Federation.
The seven-year commercial rights partnership, signed in November 2020, had only been in place for one year.
‘Finally, FKF have made a breakthrough. They are set to secure a sponsor for the top-tier league,” the source told this scribe on Thursday.
“It will be a good deal because they will provide club money.”
On Wednesday, during the FKF league match pitting Kariobangi Sharks and Nzoia that ended in Favour of the sugar cane millers, Pay television broadcaster StarTimes paraded their posters.
Two years ago, StarTimes forced the cancellation of their agreement and accused the Kenyan governing body disbanded by that time of poorly executing their agreement.
“To this end, we have honored our part of contractual obligations including but not limited to the timely disbursement of copyright fees.
“However, after a careful review of the contract performance which is now in its second season, we regret to announce that we have taken the painful decision to withdraw our media and commercial rights sponsorship,” StarTimes said.
The sponsorship involved the transmission of FKF Premier League and National Super League matches and friendly matches of the national team, Harambee Stars.
The Chinese company said FKF had failed to deliver a number of those scheduled matches and suffered from frequent changes to confirmed fixtures.
“Despite prior confirmations, several fixtures including one Mashemeji derby in the 2020/21 season were not delivered.
“We have had to work with an unstable fixture that has constantly changed, at times on short notice. This has led to lack of cohesion and promotion of wrong fixtures which ultimately translated to limited awareness of broadcasted matches.”
It added that the FKF had ‘constantly put the StarTimes brand into disrepute’ through failure and/or delayed delivery of scheduled fixtures which exposed their brand to constant subscriber backlash.
