By Mphatso Sam
The Malawi National Football Team 2022 World Cup qualifying match against Botswana raked K10.995 million gross from gate collection, an amount Football Association of Malawi (FAM) has described as satisfactory.
Speaking in an interview with Malawi News Agency on Wednesday, FAM Commercial and Marketing Director, Limbani Matola noted that the revenue collected exceeded the country’s soccer governing body expectations.
According to Matola, after deducting K4.3 million direct costs for hosting the match, the total net revenue stands at K6.9 million. From this amount, 70 per cent which translates to K4.6 million went to FAM while 25 per cent (K1.6 million) went to Kamuzu Stadium as ground levy.
Matola added that K330 thousand went to Malawi National Council of Sports as government.
“Initially, we planned to print 3000 tickets but due to the demand, we kept on increasing the numbers up to 10 000 tickets. This was the case because of the system we used with our ticket provider, NITEL.
“When tickets were selling out we were able to supply to our sales agents to all our outlets across Blantyre City. We also worked on pricing; advanced tickets were selling at K1000 and a lot of people bought them,” he explained.
According to Matola, the impressive gate revenue was due to large turnout of supporters to the match to support the team.
“Malawians came in large numbers to support their national team and we did not think, in our projection, that the patronage could be as it turned out.
“It was a working day within the middle of the month and though amid tough economic situation, the supporters came in large numbers. We are satisfied and thank Malawians who came to patronize the match,” he said.
The Flames progressed to the group stages of the Qatar 2022 World Cup through a late Gerald Phiri Junior’s 80th minute penalty and Malawi now joins 14 other teams that have made it to the group stages alongside 26 others who were seeded.
The 40 teams will be pooled into 10 groups of four teams each and the winner in each group will qualify for the third round. The 10 teams will be paired against each other to identify five teams which will qualify for the 2022 Qatar World Cup games.-MANA