Unnecessary meddling by government officials in sporting activities in Nigeria is limiting the growth of investment opportunities into the sector, industry experts say.
“The situation in which our government tries to run sports overtime is taunting the business of sports in Nigeria” Babatunde Ruwase, president Lagos Chamber of Commerce and Industry (LCCI) said at the 2019 roundtable discussion on sports business and dispute resolution last week.
“Sports should be run as a business hence Nigeria needs to look beyond the entertainment aspect of sports and explore the inherent opportunities of investment”, Ruwase noted.
Globally, the business of sports is worth over $1.3 billion, representing about three per cent of the world’s trade. This sporadic development in the sector is yet to be in Africa most populous nation as industry experts say no adequate attention has been given to sports rather, the government have chosen to reckon sports as an entertainment event than creating an enabling environment that would drive investment into space.
According to industry experts, this interference by the government has some bottlenecks that led to a mismanagement of the system and dampened transparency of contracts that sent negative signals to investors looking to invest in the space.
“The Nigerian sports industry has remained in its infancy stage because we concentrate more on participatory sports as opposed to the business of sports which should be dependent on professionalism”, Nkechi Obi – Chairperson, Sports Industry Thematic Group of the Nigerian Economic Summit Group, told BusinessDay.
“Furthermore, there are not enough funding and investment coming in to create value in the industry and ensure that a greater number of the population can do sports at whatever level. There is a misperception by the government seeing sports as a social function as opposed to a business that can help create value to drive investments”, she added
Obi explained that if the country can put in place the right policies; right legislation and the right governance structures it could have an industry that would account for about 3 per cent of GDP in the space of six years. “To do this, we need laws, we need the federation to come fit for purpose and drive the development of the industry from corporate governance and administration and management perspective”, she concluded.
Against this backdrop, the Lagos Chamber of Commerce International Arbitration Centre (LACIAC) organised a roundtable to engage stakeholders on sports business and dispute resolution.
The discussions which were centred on making industry-specific alternative dispute resolution platforms directly accessible to sports bodies and active stakeholders towards strengthening legal frameworks and facilitating commercial growth in the sports industry.
It also entails building up a strong commercial relationship that is designed to ensure sporting success as well as secure investments of interested stakeholders
Funmi Iyayi, CEO of LACIAC said alternative dispute resolution is an applied form that would help businesses manage disputes or even avoid them.
According to her, rather than going to the court when disputes arise, LACIAC has proffered a platform where businesses can have disputes that arise from their transactions addressed while still maintain their commercial relationship.
