So after a self inflicted extended break, the NPFL has decided that they will not have enough time to finish the season and the cup, so, well read it for yourself: http://npfl.ng/amp/league-managemen...nsultative-meeting/?__twitter_impression=true League Management Company (LMC) the body which runs the Nigerian Professional Football League (NPFL) has reached an agreement with Club owners of the participating clubs of the 2018 season of the NPFL as regards the season which have been truncated by the FIFA World Cup and the NFF leadership crisis. Rising from a meeting on Thursday night in Abuja attended by all stakeholders of the NPFL, decisions were reached in order to beat the deadline ordered by CAF for continental representatives from member nations. It was decided that league leaders, Lobi Stars of Makurdi, will be crowned champions as the league will be discontinued with a fresh 2018/2019 season to run from November 2018 to May 2019 after 16 voted in the favour of ending the league. This was done to meet the Confederation of African Football (CAF) October 15 deadline for the submission of country representatives for the 2018/2019 continental club tournaments. Lobi Stars will now represent Nigeria in the CAF Champions League, while the Aiteo Cup champions will represent the country in the CAF Confederation Cup. It was also decided that no team will be relegated and with four teams gaining promotion from the Nigeria National League (NNL), there will be an abridged league season of two groups of 12 teams with outright champions to be determined by a Super 4 tournament. Six teams will be relegated next season with only two gaining promotion so that the 2019/2020 season will return to a 20-team league. The NPFL has been on break since July 13, in what should have been a month long break for the FIFA World Cup but the protracted leadership tussle in the NFF meant it wasn’t resumed for almost two extra months. Lobi Stars who lead the NPFL table on Matchday 24 will be champions for the first time ever and bottom placed Heartland FC will heave a sigh of relief. These decisions will be effected as soon as the NFF executive committee ratifies it. So, congratulations to Lobi Stars, 2018 Champions of Nigeria!
So how did all of this get decided and why? Seems like the league is taking some steps backwards and even towards insolvency despite some signs of new ideas a year or two before. I've tried to follow NPSL and there was a nice Youtube channel showing highlights for awhile but that only seemed to last one season until it fell apart for some reason. The broadcast and filming equipment seemed very professional, but the inconsistency going into the next season seemed to suggest that it was a bit of an informal operation or at least only partly funded by the league. Any more updates on things being done to upgrade the league? Stadium renovations, marketing, television, online, new owners, teams, investment, etc?
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9T47F8_ea2AwxqjbX3XwHw/videos Actually, it seems that they did start showing highlights again, they just didn't start showing them when the season started and I lost interest in checking in for them thinking that the project was abandoned... happy to see that that was back again regardless... Positives I see are that the pitches all seem to look much better than in years past, so it seems that this is a league-wide directive. Lack of fans in the stands continues sadly. I really think that if one wealthy individual were to buy a club like Enyimba, build a new stadium and invest in players and win CAF then that person could create a following for domestic football unseen in Nigeria for some time. TP Mazembe proved that this could be done and that Africans would take their eyes of their televised European matches for domestic football if it was done right. Even South Africans seem to be beginning to support clubs that aren't Orlando or Kaiser Chiefs. With Arsenal being sold, perhaps Dangote could be convinced to invest in the NPFL. Is the situation so dire that no Nigerian with money is willing to invest there? Granted it wouldn't be profitable at first, but it can't be that expensive to run a NPFL club better than they've been run thus far...
https://www.cnn.com/2018/08/20/africa/fifa-nigeria-football-ban/index.html Just looked into this to find out why the season was ended early. Apparently the issues between Dalung and Pinnick that began last year when Pinnick hired Rohr came to an impasse and Dalung tried to fire/replace Pinnick which is a no-no with FIFA. As soon as I found out what caused the delay I immediately thought, "wait there was a court case and everything, isn't this something that the federation govern's for itself, FIFA will never allow this." And after looking up whether Nigeria faced a ban over this, sure enough they did and it all ended up going back to the way it was in the first place. I wonder why they even bothered going to court over this since FIFA was never going to accept Giwa's appointment considering how they've dealt with such things in the past. I've often lamented FIFA's overarching heavy-handedness regarding Nigeria in the past since I've often felt that this rule has often been applied by them on a rather inconsistent basis depending on the nation involved, but I've never really liked Solomon Dalung or his ideas either. At least Pinnick, regardless of what one thinks about his hiring of Rohr, seems to care about football above his own ego. Such a waste of time in the end and now the league is going to have an even more difficult time trying to attract investment now... what a mess...
An unnecessary mess. The new mess is the upcoming season. Because of how the league concluded, they decided not to relegate any teams. They also decided to accept the four promoted clubs from the NNL. The NNL hasn't run their playoff to determine the clubs. They want all 8 to be promoted. The NPFL has put their foot down and told the NNL to complete the playoff or the season goes on without them. The Dangote situation is frustrating. He already owns a club: BCC Lions, they're wallowing in the amateur league. The YouTube situation: 2016 they put videos up. 2017 the had a deal with a mobile company so you could only watch on your phone. 2018 deal is dead, return to YouTube.
This sounds a lot like what DAZN is doing in sports in North America. And it's a perfect system for Nigeria where alot of internet traffic operates by mobile phone. But that still requires Nigerians to have an interest in either purchasing a membership or an app. I imagine that the mobile company in question purchased the rights pending sales rather than any type of up front deal and subsequently missed all of it's payments when noone in Nigeria wanted to pay for it. Right now, in the interest of building support for the league, access to the games needs to be 100% free. And instead of just highlights, they should consider showing entire matches.
Well, the NTA has the broadcast rights, and last year they said that they would show one game a week live and the rest on delay. With all the games being uploaded to YouTube. That's what they said. In reality, at 4pm on Sunday you could put your TV on your local NTA channel and a game would be on. Only a handful be were actually on YouTube.