BTC Premiership heavyweights Mochudi Centre Chiefs are stuck in the mud of investor and sponsorship deals. The Kgatleng side has recently been challenged by lack of resources since the team investor Sayed Jamali and Botswana Football Association (BFA) President Maclean Letshwiti cut ties with the club.
Sources close to the club have revealed it has approached construction mogul and former Gaborone United sponsor Nicolas Zackhem and former BMC investors, the Ghodratti family, to invest in the club.
It is said that Chiefs’s efforts drew a blank as Zackhem is already linked to Premiership side Gilport Lions and has already offered a sponsorship deal to Gaborone United.
‘’Chiefs approached the businessmen Zackhem and the Ghodratti family to either take over as shareholders of the club or sponsors
“Zackhem is engaged with a lot of clubs with two in the Premiership already and another in the volleyball league, so his hands are a bit tight while the Ghodratti family is anxious to return to the game after chaos that transpired when they took over BMC a few seasons ago,” a source told Sunday Standard.
Another option was to extend a sponsorship deal between the club and Huawei which has since come to an end. Sunday Standard investigations have uncovered that Chiefs declined half a million Pula offer by their former partners.
Beginning of last season Chiefs had unveiled the Huawei sponsorship together with Honey Guide/Lomepe Sorghum meal and Bank of Baroda for an undisclosed amount.
Chiefs chairpeson Ernest Molome rubbished reports that they had approached the Ghodratti family and Zackhem but confirmed they were still negotiating with Huawei. ‘’We have never approached any of the alleged businessmen. The fact of the matter is that I personally have a good relationship with the Ghodrattis but is has nothing to do with Chiefs,” said Molome.
However, Molome added that they had written a proposal to Huawei on an improved partnership and only waiting for their response in the near future.
“‘We are still negotiating with Huawei and nothing concrete has been confirmed and details cannot be shared at the moment. It should be understood that Chiefs is a big brand, with or without a sponsor we can still make things happen and this season we are going for the championship. There was a point when we didn’t have a sponsor and won everything on the table that season. It is a fact that we lost some of our investors and this things do happen in football so we had to be prepared all the time to cushion such predicaments,” narrated Molome.
