President of the Ghana Table Tennis Association (GTTA), Mawuko Afadzinu, has disclosed that while the Association receives funding from corporate bodies and other revenue streams, it has lost some sponsorship deals with some airline and hospitality companies.

He made this revelation in a virtual discussion on a Happy FM-led virtual discussion dubbed ‘The effects of COVID-19 on least financed sports in Ghana.

“We had engaged with a number of corporate bodies and we had very interesting discussions and indeed we had a very promising league with these industries including airlines. The airlines and hospitality industries and the entire value chain are the industries that have been most impacted by COVID-19 and for us, it couldn’t have come at the worst time.

We were on the verge of announcing what we call breakthrough, record-changing, discipline-impacting sponsorship deal with an international airline and we got COVID-19 happening. And so, for us it’s been very difficult”, he said.

He was however positive that the Association will recover from the impact of COVID-19. Outlining the way forward, Mawuko stressed, “We are not staying there. Life is about how you pick yourself up when you are on the ground and that is the nature of sports. We are looking at a very practical recovery approach. In this period, we are weighing a number of things because we need to keep the federation running. We are still taking care of certain key officials. We don’t have any inflows coming up but thankfully we are surviving. It has pushed us to be creative and see how we can be robust about our cash flows”.