Gumel, Pulcrano, Ekeji, Others For Sportspro Nigeria Seminar

VETERAN Sports consultant and Managing Director of Premium Sports Management Services, Nkechi Obi, has described sports as the largest sector of the creative industry and a key policy asset capable of driving economic growth, job creation and export expansion in developing countries while offering a potential medium for improving the productivity of the work force and a healthier physically active population.

Speaking on the forthcoming Sportspro Nigeria, an innovative sports event to be held at the Lagos Business School, Ajah on August 11, Obi said a country of over 170 million citizens with a growing middle class and a young population, 65 per cent of who are between the ages of 15 and 30 years, deserved to be reaping from the numerous possibilities in the sector.

“Sports in Nigeria is still largely government dominated, and corporate involvement in sports is seen largely from the standpoints of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), despite the unique growth in global sports financing and the centrality of sports business and marketing that forces corporate organizations in developed countries to engage in sport for economic reasons. 

The potentials of the sports sector to drive future economic growth and youth development has been held back by the inability to amassed the quantum of funds required to drive sports as a business in Nigeria to the extent it has been reduced to a footnote, with emphasis been placed only on participation at major events,’’ she observed.