Clubs support Debmarine’s proposal

Several football clubs in Namibia are siding with Debmarine Namibia’s proposal and laid-out conditions of their sponsorship towards the 2024-2025 season.

The mining company issued a letter towards the Namibia Football Association (NFA) in which they set conditions if they were to extend their sponsorship of the league for the next season.

Debmarine’s conditions echoes the concerns clubs have raised in the past couple of weeks over the negotiations happening between the association’s executives and the mining company.

As things stand, Debmarine Namibia demands that the clubs are involved in the primary negotiations and that any contract to be signed is supported by all parties in order to avoid standoffs between the clubs and the controlling body.

“As reiterated in the meeting, the diamond industry is and has been for the last year in a very difficult position due to market and economic conditions and our first priority remains to protect our business,” the letter from Debmarine Namibia reads.

The mining company nevertheless commits to sponsor the league with N$18 million despite the economic conditions.

The company states that it understands the impact of the sponsorship and therefore they have availed themselves for the 2024-2025 season.

The negotiation conditions include that the values and arrangements are based on an agreement that they and the NFA had on 13 September this year.

Debmarine other conditions to the sponsorship are:

• “That the rights and obligations as set out in the said agreement is shared with the clubs and that the clubs acknowledges and sign this conditions.

• “That the current disputes with regards to the clubs constituting the league be finalised.

• “That the NFA together with the clubs and with the support of Fifa come up with concrete plans towards independence of the league for the 2025-2026 season.”

The company reckons the conditions laid out will ease matters for more corporate companies to be able to invest in football.

Sport Wrap has been informed that the clubs have not been brought to the negotiation table yet and that is the reason why the sponsorship agreement has not been finalised.

Well-placed sources within the NFA suggested that the association's leadership are allegedly still contemplating on its decisions due to issues that they have had with some clubs in the past.

“It is however inevitable that the NFA and the clubs will eventually bow to the conditions given that Debmarine Namibia is so far the sole sponsor that has expressed its interest in sponsoring the league so far,” a source said.



Licensing period ‘too short’

Another issue that was reported earlier on by Sport Wrap was the announcement of the club licensing system which was introduced by the Confederation of African Football (CAF).

A number of clubs have already indicated they have submitted their details to have them licensed, although they feel the period given was too short.

They say the handing of some information like coaches and lease contracts among others will take time because they have to negotiate with these parties in order to have written documents.

“Yes, we do agree that the club licensing system is very important and that is why we have submitted some of the documents we could get. But other documents are less easy to submit, because we do not even have a budget we can work on yet given that the negotiations between the sponsors of the league and parties involved have not been sealed yet,” one club owner said.