Nigerians will watch Rio Olympics live- Awogu, SuperSport GM

With the Rio Olympics just around the corner, Nigerians, like the rest of the world, are expected to follow the games keenly and pray that their team brings laurels home. The General Manager, SuperSport, Felix Awogu, says the broadcaster will bring the games live to homes across the country. The Rio Olympics is just few weeks away. Nigerians/Africans will like to know the role SuperSport will play in the games.

In keeping with tradition, it is to deliver the best quality content. We are covering virtually everything and we have a couple of dedicated channels, which will be beaming those events live to our audience. The beautiful thing about us is that we are also going ahead with technology because of the timing, which is probably not very convenient with most people. We have the catch up facility, which MultiChoice has provided and customers can always catch up when they wake up in the morning especially to watch the performance of the Nigerian team. I heard the minister saying that Nigeria is expecting four gold medals. Awogu Awogu To me, that will be a great record. I have a feeling we will not come back empty handed like we did in London. Some of our wrestlers are doing brilliantly well. The lifters always have ways of springing surprises. Blessing Okagbare, I hope will also be able to do us proud. We will be paying special focus on the football team because Nigeria is technically a football country and I hope this year’s selected team will do us proud and move ahead from the last qualification in the finals where they won silver, and probably win us gold. It has been a long time since ’96. What are the unique attractions people should watch out for during the Olympics? We are sending a full team who will be covering it. I know a lot of people have been wondering how we will manage with the Zika scare and it is a major constraint. Even though some athletes are pulling out, we just need to prepare ourselves, take preventive measures and go there to do a quality job. I am sure the Brazilian government would do whatever they can to safeguard participating Olympic athletes and visitors to the games, including journalists. We have a team following the Nigerian team, especially the football and athletic teams, just like we do with some of these well established athletes. There will be a couple of magazine shows in place for subscribers apart from the daily highlights. It will be quite innovative. If we look at it critically, Nigeria does not really have that athlete that has that followership that is really medal hopeful. Is DStv not bothered by this? Let me tell you, a lot of people said we failed in London. I am one of those that think we didn’t fail. If you look at the team, most of our athletes finished in the semi-finals. They didn’t win medals but I see a lot of progression, what could happen is transcending from that semi-final finish into the medal zone this year. If you look at ’96, we didn’t expect any medal in football even after losing to Togo here in the last friendly. We still went ahead to win. We are a team, a country that likes to spring surprises. Wrestling is doing pretty well. Two of our wrestlers, the female ones, are actually in the top three in the world so why not give them a chance? Athletics we may have a few issues but I think we should look at relay and if I were the managers of Okagbare, I will tell her to focus on the jumps because that is the area where she has the advantage. Here, we are pushing her into athletics, 100 metres, 200 metres, relay, I hope she doesn’t burn out. Sometimes, you need to sit down and look at your structure and look at where you have comparative advantage and stick to it. Basketball will be part of Nigeria’s team at the Olympics. Back home, DStv has really been part of the promotion of basketball. What were the major challenges you faced in sponsorship of the premier basketball league? First of all, if we were not convinced that there is a future, we will not be part of basketball. It was well articulated and deliberate. I ask a lot of Nigerians if it should only be football, but I think basketball has great potential. Since we began our relationship with NBBF, of which I am a member of the executive board, a lot of our young basketballers have gotten scholarships to American universities. This is a plus. One or two of them have gotten into the NBA. These have become assets to national development. To us, it is a welcome development. Of course, there are issues, there were a few hiccups here and there, in terms of the facilities, which is not the responsibility of the NBBF to provide. It is actually the government’s responsibility to provide facilities for the athletes to participate. The minister has promised that they will look into it. We do what we can; we have helped with the lighting up of the place and a lot of other support apart from finances to the NBBF. I have said you don’t just rely on one sponsor. I have always encouraged sporting clubs to also develop a marketing team, a brand manager who looks at the image of their products. This goes a long way in the marketability of such sporting clubs. In other words, the sponsorship of the basketball league has been a huge success? Well, not in terms of decoder sales. In terms of Corporate Social Investment, we are providing a selfless service to Nigerians, in terms of supporting the athletes. Yes, it has been a huge success. But when you talk about return on investment, I don’t think it has been fantastic but it has a great future. We sometimes invest to our own disadvantage. We spend money in the league, which nobody wanted to associate with and today it is increasingly becoming a big brand and we’re happy because we are contributing to the society. When I go the USA and I see some of our athletes who came out from the Basketball League contributing to their families it is a great one. I think we need to look more into making basketball an entertainment sport, not just a physical activity. This will go a long way in helping it, that’s what the NBA did and that is how it grew. As far as the return on investment is concerned, are there plans to renew sponsorship after 2017 when it elapses? We have already started discussions. We are discussing with the NBBF and if they feel we have done enough and they think we can still remain partners, it is something we can all sit at a table and see how we can add value. But of course, there has been a little touching here, touching there to make it meaningful after five years of sponsoring the league. I think it is time we had a turn around, we will be happy to see a boost. Will you be extending sponsorships to other sports? We have already started. Boxing was dead. Today, boxing is back on the front burner in Nigerian sports. We have done marvelously well. Look at the GOtv Boxing for instance. It’s brought back the spirit of boxing to Nigeria. Kids are beginning to run around. It’s no longer about selling pure water on the streets. They can actually begin to move into other sports and earn some income. It is changing. It is also catching up with the Lagos State governor’s desire to eradicate street hawking. We will gladly entertain and bring them into boxing and make it a great sport. It used to be a huge sport back in the days in Nigeria with people like Hogan Kid Bassey, Dick Tiger, a couple of them that were world champions and if you visit the hall of fame in America, you will see a lot of Nigerians that have done well. Remember, boxing gave us our first Olympic medal. We have decided, when we saw there was no motivation for the sport and people were getting bashed while earning N500, N5,000 which was not even enough to treat their wounds, we put in some money; a lot of money and television coverage and it is beginning to work out well. Some of our boxers are being invited to the US, UK because of their exposure, to fight and to earn some decent money. With the attraction GOtv boxing has brought in, how much has it really reflected on the GOtv brand itself? To be honest, it is delivering. It is about two years old but the impact is so strong that I’m amazed. I didn’t know boxing had strong followership, such loyalty in Nigeria. You can see the stadium is filled up, people pay to come and watch, although most of the gates-takings are actually donated to older fighters who actually need some level of support. It is amazing and I’m really excited about the prospect and the future of boxing in Nigeria. Tell us about one of your CSI initiatives, ‘Let’s play’. What is the goal behind it? First of all, let’s look at the whole principle of ‘Let’s Play’. It is not really about winning all the time, it is about getting the children active again. Research has proven that a lot of children are becoming obese and a lot of parents are spending so much money in the hospitals. We came out with the idea and asked how can we get the children playing again. Schools today is just one structure somewhere and the kids are not playing. We went into partnership with the ministry of sports and state governments to see how we can get these kids running around again and engaging their friends. Football of course is a major catch. You know if you give one child a soccer ball, he doesn’t play alone, he will engage about 20-30 other children. To us, it was a major direction, and in the last two years, we have probably given over 20,000 soccer balls to Nigerian children and 20,000 soccer balls is not for 20,000 kids. We are talking about 2 to 3 million children who are engaged, running around. That’s the whole principle. Read more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2016/07/nigerians-will-watch-rio-olympics-live-awogu-supersport-gm/