Felix Awogu is a known face in the Nigeria’s sports industry and presently, the General Manager, SuperSport International, in this chat with correspondent, he says exploration of technologies will grow revenue in sports industry.
As a digitally–minded person, what impact do you think
technology and the digital age would have on sports, especially football?
Oh! Yes, quite well, indeed, technology and the computer age
have already started impacting positively on sports generally and football in
particular. Of digitalized television stations – for example AIT 1, 2, 3, 4 and
5; and NTA 1, 2, 3 4 and 5 from where you have a barrage of options to watch
your favourite games. There was no way the analogue station would have been
able to cope with such.
Also consider the broadband technology. Now you can do
online payment to book for seats ahead of matches and games you intend to watch
live and all that.
Considering our peculiar situation in Nigeria, are you
positive that we would actually explore these technologies for the benefit of
sports development?
It all depends. The world is going digital. If you don’t go
with them you would be left behind. All relevant associations, organizations
that have to do with sports administrations like football federation,
basketball federations, and even governments must look critically into areas of
how to explore technology to make more revenue in sports.
Is there any way we can bring technology into play in order
to stop some of the vices such as age cheats and match-fixing. Particularly in
Africa and Nigeria, how can we improve in these areas to better our sports?
First of all, we have to note that these things are not
peculiar to Nigeria. Match-fixing, age cheats and all that. The first thing to
do is to ensure that there is proper childbirth record. The truth is that no
child is born in developed world today without adequate record of him or her by
the appropriate arm.
In our own case here, the truth is that many of the children
honestly do not know their date of birth because there is no proper record to
that effect; those are mainly children of the less privileged.
However, it is cheering that the census board is taking care
of this aspect fairly well. This means that in the next five years or
thereabout, it will be difficult to forge birth certificate and get involved in
age cheating.
Again, however, another way out of it as I called the former
minister of sport and told him that if we had to stop age cheat, he should stop
rewarding Under – 17.
When you give an Under -17 player a house in Abuja, you are
telling him that category is an end; not a means to an end. At 17, they are
supposed to be of school age.
So, you can give them scholarship. It will reduce age cheat.
Once that category of footballing is made less attractive, we’ll get over
over-age cheat.
What is your advice to sports managers generally in Nigeria?
It all depends on the sport manager you mean. It may be the
managers of the clubs, or even television station managers who handle sports
content or the administrators, coaches, they are all managers.
For coaches, they must always recognise that they are not
the ones to play. They must really learn to discover players, individual
special talent, skill, strength and weakness; be above board in selection to
ensure honestly that strictly, only players that should make the team do so.
Don’t forget any time you rob an Under-17 of the right
chance to feature, you are denying the country a talent in the national team.
When you engage in age-cheat with an over-aged player in the U-17, you are
robbing another Nigerian child of the opportunity to play at the national level
and consequently play in the diaspora.
Coaches should see themselves as role models and live up to
that noble expectation.
For the administrators, there must be discipline, real sense
of business, and we should be more forth-coming in our planning; then we will
get there.
... Making SENSE of digital revolution!
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