Kenyan Premier League Limited have struck off KPL Top 8 tournament from their calendar for this season in an unprecedented move after the withdrawal of supersport early this year this is set to cut on costs incurred www.soka25east.com can reveal.
The tournament involved teams that finished among top eight positions in previous season and Muhoroni Youth were the defending champions after beating Gor Mahia in the final last season.
KPL CEO Jack Oguda has confirmed to soka25east.com on the new development saying that the tournament is among the many affected following the withdrawal of title sponsors SuperSport early this year.
“We have been forced to shelve a number of tournament and KPL Top 8 is one those affected. We don’t have money to cater for the tournament hence the decision to struck it off our calendar of events for this season.”
On the U-20 tournament, Oguda says they are still sourcing for partners to help stage the same. “We are still working round the clock to get new sponsors for the tournament. We have not done away with the tournament because we strongly believe that we will get a sponsor.”
Reports also suggest that KPL have struck off a proposed Under-16 tournament and hiring of floodlights for night Kenyan Premier League matches from their budget.
Meanwhile Kenyan premier league clubs must look outside the box and get ways of sustaining their ever growing wage bill.
From July 2017 all teams get ksh 300,000 or $3000 from initial ksh 650,000 $6500 that’s a huge drop yet most of them rarely get ksh 4000 or $40 dollars in gate collections.
From the Sh270.9 million total income controlled by KPL in 2016, the company spent a total of Sh19.5 million on marketing and advertising, and Sh13.3 million on nine staff members currently on the company’s payroll.
KPL Ltd’s finance committee has struck out a number of items in the 2017 budget, among them
KPL Top 8 tournament,Under-20 tournament,a proposed Under-16 tournament, Corporate Social Responsibility and hiring of floodlights for night games
