The Ghana Football Association and Premier league clubs in the country will need to conduct some self-assessment to determine why Ghana’s top flight football league has failed to attract corporate sponsorship, Dr Kwame Baah-Nuakoh, a Sports and Marketing Communications consultant, has said.

According to him, the FA has done very little to promote the local league in order to attract sponsors since Capital Bank pulled out of its 5-year deal with the FA to sponsor the Ghana Premier League.

His comments echo those made by the Minister of Youth and Sports, Edwin Nii Lantey Vanderpuye that the league has no sponsors because of its unattractiveness.

This assertion by the Minister attracted sharp response from the Premier League Board, which claimed in a statement that Mr Vanderpuye’s assertion was wrong.

Their statement said: “The attention of the Premier League Board (PLB) has been drawn to a claim by the Minister of Youth and Sports, Nii Lantey Vanderpuye, on an Accra-based radio station that the Ghana Premier League (GPL) is unattractive hence the absence of a sponsor for the competition. Inasmuch as Nii Lantey Vanderpuye may have been expressing his opinion, such claims are unfounded as the facts on the ground sharply contradict the Minister’s statement.”

“What is even more disappointing is the fact that the incorrect statement comes from no less a person than the sector minister, who is expected to promote and project the league to attract the necessary public and corporate support. The PLB finds it unfortunate that the sector minister would ridicule the attractiveness of the Ghana Premier League (GPL) without giving any evidence to buttress his claim and also proceed to unjustifiably link the absence of a headline sponsor to his wrong claims of the unattractiveness of the country’s top-flight league. Any enthusiastic follower of the Ghana Premier League will firmly disagree with the Minister's claim that the league is unappealing.”

But Dr Baah-Nuakoh who is also a Senior Vice President in Charge of Marketing, Research and Corporate Affairs at Royal Bank, speaking in an interview with Class Sports’ Kwame Dwomoh Agyemang, expressed his disappointment at the FA’s failure to properly position the GPL brand.

He said: “When can I be assured of when the league will start so that I can kick in my advertising and other campaigns to utilise the benefits that I am supposed to get from the league [and] why will I put my money in? The FA and its clubs need to re-evaluate why every sponsor comes in and leaves. Probably they are not getting the benefits. If they are getting the benefits they signed up for, then nobody leaves. If I am getting the benefits I signed up for and I think these benefits are worthwhile, I will continue sponsoring.”