The Nationwide League One (NLO) is about to finalize its biggest-ever sponsorship deal worth multi-million naira and also announce a partnership with two foreign service providers., OwoSports.com.ng reports.
The sponsorship deal, which will run for four years, is a record-breaking achievement for grassroots football development in Nigeria. NLO Chairman and former Deputy Governor of Nasarawa State, His Excellency Silas Agara, shared more details about the deal.
“We are pleased with the number of brands that have shown interest in the NLO in recent months, as we aim to make the NLO a global phenomenon and the most successful grassroots football league in Africa, as challenged by NFF President, Alh. Ibrahim Musa Gusau.”
“One of our partners is a lottery company licensed by the Nigeria Lottery Commission; they will be NLO Title Sponsors. We have agreed on a four-year sponsorship deal and will unveil it on Thursday, March 14, 2024. Twenty-four hours later, on Friday, March 15, the NLO will unveil four of its potential partners.”
“One of them is a service provider, a Croatian-based sports tracking platform with over 25 million active monthly users worldwide. This is excellent news for our clubs, as they have also requested that the NLO help them bring other leagues in Nigeria on board. Although there is no monetary value involved, we have agreed to share benefits to develop our league and work with them.”
“However, there is another IT firm that has agreed to develop websites for all the NLO clubs. They will also open social media channels for all the clubs and train club officials on how to manage the sites. After that, they will commercialize the website and the social media handles to enable the clubs to generate funds to support their clubs. The NLO views this as a good avenue for club development and another source of revenue stream for the clubs in NLO.”
Honourable Silas Agara also hinted that “two other technical partners will join the NLO to facilitate talent discovery with the use of technology. The nation’s third-tier domestic football league sees them as a Development Partner, and we have agreed to allow them access to our data. The benefits to NLO are on revenue sharing when the data are sold, and we have a device to monitor what they do with our data.”
In a separate development, to expand its reach to a broader audience and passionate followers of the league, the NLO has launched its two channels on Blend TV.
