Across the four days, we had approximately 4,000 people a day— roughly 16,000 cumulative spectator visits. Children. Parents. Coaches. Academy owners. Supporters. Families. An entire football community.
And here is the interesting part. Not a single Coca-Cola or Pepsi product was sold at the tournament.
Think about that from a marketing perspective rather than an emotional one. Here was a sizeable captive consumer ecosystem running for four days without the two giant international carbonated-drinks brands participating in it.
The tournament did have Safaricom involved, and my relationship with Safaricom is different. It goes back many years to Sakata Ball. Safaricom itself records Sakata Ball among its major initiatives launched in 2010, while contemporary reporting at the launch of Chapa Dimba in 2017 described the new tournament as the return of Sakata Ball under a new name.
There is history there. There is trust. There is an understanding of grassroots football.
But next year, when I hold the Ligi East Africa Cup again, I have made a decision. I am not going hunting for the big boys. I would rather have Reload. No Bumps. Rescumed. Cheers Bakery. The local food vendor. The neighborhood entrepreneur. The ice-cream cart guy around the corner. Businesses for whom 4,000 people coming through a venue in a day represents a serious commercial opportunity. Businesses that can grow with us.
Because I am beginning to question one of the most deeply embedded habits in African sports marketing. We build something. We find an audience. We struggle for years to establish credibility. We bring thousands of people together. Then, once the property finally has value, we go begging outside the door of a multinational asking:“ Please sponsor us.”
They give you a fraction of what it cost you- in money, time and years- to build the audience. Then they want title rights. Category exclusivity. Branding everywhere. Hospitality. Access to your customers. Sometimes data. Sometimes control over other partners. And we are supposed to be grateful because we have secured a“ big sponsor.” Why?
The event owner created the gathering. The academy built the trust. The parents bring the purchasing power. The children create the emotional connection. So who really owns the value?
19 MAL74 / 26 ISSUE
The Billion-Shilling Market Hiding in Plain Sight
This question becomes much more interesting when you look at the size of Kenya’ s paid-to-play youth football academy industry. My current estimate puts the market at approximately KSh1.3 billion annually, with a reasonable central range of roughly KSh1.0 billion to KSh1.8 billion. This is an informed market estimate, not an audited official industry statistic.
I would not stand in front of investors and claim this is already a KSh5 billion or KSh10 billion market. I cannot substantiatethat. And I do not need to. The more fascinating number is actually much smaller.
Only around 25,000 to 30,000 paying children may be required to sustain a billion-shilling academy economy. Kenya’ s population in 2026 is estimated at roughly 58.6 million people based on UN population projections.
Think about the penetration level. Twenty-five or thirty thousand paying children in a country approaching 60 million people. That does not describe an exhausted market. It describes a young, fragmented market. There are academies everywhere, but no dominant national paid-to-play platform.
And the academy fee itself is only the beginning. A football child needs boots. Training kit. Transport. Food. Tournament entry. Photos. Video. Statistics. Holiday camps. Sometimes accommodation and travel. Medical services. Physiotherapy. Insurance. Performance analysis. Merchandise. Equipment.
Then Mum is at the tournament. Dad is there. Siblings are there. They eat. They drink. They shop. They need entertainment.
Suddenly, the interesting economic unit is not simply the academy player. It is the football family. And that is where marketers should start paying attention.
Big brands spend millions trying to locate exactly these same consumers: parents, children, aspirational families, young sports enthusiasts and communities with disposable income. We assemble them every weekend. So perhaps the most valuable thing a good academy owns is not its football programme. It is not even its pitch. It is the relationship with the family.
Of course, this market has one major problem: facilities. Quality urban playing fields are scarce. Land is expensive. Good pitches are expensive to develop and maintain, and available training hours are finite.
In my view, the operators who solve facilities alongside coaching, technology, payments, competitions, communication, data and customer experience will have a chance to consolidate a market that is still extremely fragmented.
And that presents an equally interesting opportunity for brands. Not only the giants. Perhaps especially not the giants. Imagine being the small bakery that genuinely grows with a youth-football community. The local grooming product that starts with a few hundred families and, ten years later, has national recognition. The medical provider whose name becomes synonymous with looking after young footballers. The technology company that grows because it solved a real problem for academies.
That is partnership. That is shared growth. And it changes the question. Instead of: which big corporate can sponsor my event? Perhaps grassroots sports organizations should start asking: which brands can grow with us?
There will always be a place for major corporate sponsors. I am not arguing otherwise. But sponsorship should be additional revenue. It should never become the business model. I learnt that lesson the expensive way nearly 30 years ago. A corpo-ration can change strategy overnight. A community takes years to build. The audience is the asset. The relationship is the asset. And if you built both, you should understand their value before handing them over cheaply in return for somebody else’ s logo on your event.
So next year, the Ligi East Africa Cup will return. The kids will come. The parents will come. The football will be played. The food will be sold. Someone will sell ice cream. Some young Kenyan brands will hopefully make very good money. And perhaps a few of them will grow with us for the next 20 years.
As for the multinational giants? Nothing personal. I learnt my lesson in 1996. No big boys in my party.
Chris Ongondo Amimo is the co-founder and chair of Kenyan Soccer Farm Ligi Ndogo S. C. Academy. You can commune with him via mail at: Amimochris @ gmail. com.