A leading telecommunications firm in the country, Telkom Kenya, last week halted sponsoring women’s hockey club, Telkom, ending their 30-year partnership. The move will have a far-reaching effect on women’s hockey and brings to the fore the difficulties most clubs have been going through for years.
Telkom have been unrivalled not just in the country, but also in the continent, having won 10 Africa Club and 21 domestic league titles since the club was formed in 1989. It is through Telkom Kenya sponsorship that this women’s team conjured the good results since the players could secure training grounds and allowances, giving them ample time to train.
Actually, Telkom Kenya contributes up to 90 per cent of the players in the national women’s hockey team. That is, definitely, going to take a hit immediately and the standards could plummet. Telkom could find itself unable to match the rest in the continent.
Telkom, who are now out to source for sponsorship, join many other self-supporting clubs that have struggled to keep afloat owing to lack of funding.
But it is not only the clubs; their parent body, Kenya Hockey Union (KHU), has been struggling to get sponsorship for their programmes, especially the national leagues, which have been without sponsors for many decades.
Telkom’s woes should be a big lesson to not only clubs, but also KHU on the need for serious marketing tactics to enable them to come up with other suitable and sustainable sources of income.
Hockey is a popular sport, from the school to club level, hence the need to interrogate what could be ailing the sport.
Players coming through really need to have hope that there is a future in hockey and that they can actually derive a livelihood from it.
