Football, the sport, is a business.
You might not believe it though, given Trinidad and Tobago’s interface with the sport—from the sporadically publicised regional tournaments which the teams participate in, to the lengthy legal battle by the Soca Warriors to get the money due to them for their 2006 World Cup appearance, to the politicising of the sport by its former national adviser and FIFA vice-president Jack Warner who resigned from the Government in April after the disclosure of the contents of football body Concacaf’s Integrity Committee which detailed allegations of financial mismanagement by Warner and former Concacaf general secretary Chuck Blazer.
Today, the local football business is in debt—$25 million of it.
The Trinidad and Tobago Football Association (TTFA) now has a triple challenge ahead...to reconcile the $25 million debt, to rebuild its image away from Warner’s shadow and to function as a proper business.
For now, the TTFA has no corporate sponsors or business partners. It functions on a FIFA stipend of US$60,000 every three months.
That sum, explains TTFA president Raymond Tim Kee, is used to pay staff salaries, rent and settle smaller debts.
In an interview with the Sunday Express at the TTFA’s offices at Ana Street, Woodbrook last Thursday, Tim Kee—who was elected to the post last November—spoke about the challenges in moving the organisation forward.
He pointed out the furniture in the meeting room was loaned by a “benevolent private company” as the TTFA lost almost everything when the Soca Warriors levied on it at its previous location at Dundonald Street in February 2012.
But Tim Kee, a deputy chairman of Guardian Life Insurance Ltd, is less daunted by challenges and pragmatic about how the organisation moves forward.
His aim is to restore confidence to the football public.
“The public has lost confidence,” he lamented, “but we are hoping to change that.”
He has already changed the organisation from the name under which it functioned under Warner—the Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation (TTFF)—to the TTFA.
Tim Kee, who was accompanied by TTFA’s general secretary Sheldon Phillips for this interview, said when he inherited the organisation from Oliver Camps, there was “minus zero, zero, zero” dollars in the bank account.
At the same time, creditors were knocking on their door.
“I inherited a headache!” Tim Kee said.
He said the TTFA owed money to 125 people and organisations like the Public Transport Service Corporation (PTSC), which has sought legal action to recover $1.4 million for services for the period August-September 2010.
He said he was in a series of meetings with other people that the organisation owned money, including former national footballer Russell Latapy who Tim Kee said is owed millions of dollars.
He theorised that at some point, the TTFA will have to work out arrangements to pay debts or in some cases like the PTSC, approach the Ministry of Sport to write off the debt.
He refused to talk about the financial state of the organisation before his tenure, instead choosing to focus on his plans to make the association financially viable.
“There is a realisation that suggests that no longer is football just a sport but indeed a business. Football is the product we take to the market and ensure that it is attractive enough for the market to choose the product over other entertainment,” he said.
To this end, he’s hoping to make football a year-long game. And he’s banking on bigger gate receipts, online merchandising and sponsorship.
Tim Kee acknowledged that it’s been a challenge to lure corporate sponsors especially from State companies.
“We are adamant that the money we will get from sponsors will not be used to offset the debt. It will be used to promote the brand and genuinely assist football,” he said.
Asked if the Government has a role, Tim Kee explained: “Government has a social responsibility to support the sport as part of the development of the nation, but that’s all.”
Money, of course, would be welcome but Tim Kee does not want a dependency culture but one of “inter-dependency”.
He pointed out that during Warner’s tenure, he would simply pump money into the organisation but no effort was made to develop separate income streams.
In his aim to reform football and earn bigger receipts at the gates, Tim Kee has taken an organic approach.
The TTFA, he said, will distribute some 15,000 footballs to schools and communities to keep the game kicking.
His expectation is that there will be ripple effects in local and national tournaments from all age groups and both genders.
The TTFA has already sought to attract a younger audience by introducing the sport in some primary schools from under-six to under-12 age brackets.
Asked if that approach was not similar to Government’s Hoop of Life basketball programme, Tim Kee immediately responded that it was entirely different.
“Hoop (of) Life is a Government-backed programme which will change if any government changes. It is not sustainable. Football is not like that,” he said.
He said there were 350 registered football organisations in the country.
As for his team, Tim Kee spoke about the talent the TTFA has been able to attract—from Phillips to national coach Stephen Hart to the return of Dutchman Leo Beenhakker for Trinidad and Tobago’s campaign for the 2018 FIFA World Cup qualifiers. It’s all part of a culture change he wants in the organisation.
“Rebranding has various elements. What we are doing is de-culturalising and re-culturalising,” he said.
Part of that re-culturalising is the proposed formation of an independent reform commission whose mandate is to take a critical look at the organisation, put a programme in place and best practice for the organisation to follow.
The TTFA also has an independent reform committee, headed by Raoul John and which includes Senior Counsel Elton Prescott, T&T Olympic Committee president Brian Lewis, former national goalkeeper Shaka Hislop, columnist Dr Sheila Rampersad, former West Indies (cricket) Players Association president Dinanath Ramnarine and former national footballer Patrick Raymond.
“I need to have something that will win back confidence from our football-loving people and there was a recommendation for a independent reform commission. They asked, and I said that commission will consist of luminaries—people who are respected in our society and trusted, each of whom should come from a different discipline,” said Tim Kee.
He has set a time frame of June 2014 to score his own personal goal.