The 2012 African Nation’s Cup,meant to show-case the best of African football and  co-hosted by Equatorial Guinea and Gabon, finally com-menced last weekend, January 21, with the nation’s soccer team, the Super Eagles, conspicuously absent. The national team had failed to qualify for the tournament after putting up a dismal performance at the preliminary  rounds of the competition.

Besides the nation’s teeming soccer fans who have continued to lament the absence of the nation’s soccer team at the tournament, stakeholders in the nation’s marketing communications industry have also been counting their losses since the commencement of this year’s edition of the tournament because  the absence of the Super Eagles had denied the industry the windfall it would have reaped before and after the tournament.

For instance, apart from a negligible few paid TV channels that televise the matches live, the regular TV stations, Brands & Marketing noticed, have not been enthusiastic in beaming the tourna-ment live to millions of soccer loving Nigerians due to the absence of the Super Eagles.

The presence of the nation’s soccer team, stakeholders believe, would have provided some brands the opportunity to leverage on, since the nation’s soccer squad, despite its declining fortunes, still commands a huge followership brands.

The Chief Executive Officer, Next Media, Dada Ajai-Ikhile, believes that besides denying the Nigerian fans the opportunity of seeing their darling team in action, it has also denied brand owners, who had been using such events in the past to market their brands.

 ‘It is definitely a huge loss for those marketing communic-ations firms that han-dle  brands and leverage on  events, such as football and sports. Some of the brands must have prepared their budgets for the tournament on the assumption that Nigeria would be playing; such brands must have beaten a retreat now, since many Nigerians would not be interested in  watching the matches as they would have loved to do if the Super Eagles had participated,’ he stated.

 “Performance of institutions and agen-cies of government, in a way, affects the private sector. This is rather unfortunate.  That the Eagles did not qualify for a major tournament like this simply means that the advertising community must have been left out.

 ‘Those that may not really be affected are those who handle the across border brands. Though one can see some familiar brands such as Samsung there, but if you cross check, it could have been done globally or handled by an agency from one of the host countries. It is definitely a huge loss for the nation’s marketing communications industry here.

Corroborating the above view, the publisher and Chief Executive Officer of Marketing Edge, John Ajayi believes some brand owners that ordinarily would want to  use the opportunity to promote their brands may not be excited to do that due to the fact that the Super Eagles are not there.

 ‘Even those who do that would want to reduce their cost involvement, because the fact that Nigerian team that commands a large followership within and outside the country is not participating will make them unen-thusiastic about the game. So, there would be apathy from the Nigerian fans about the game. Unfortunately, it is this teeming number that advertisers want to reach out to,’ he added.

 He noted that while some advertisers, who were major players with global brands would not hesitate to key into the event by using the opportunity to promote their brands, those who didn’t have global brands would be reluctant to doing this.

 ‘It is something far less attractive for brand owners here to attract  a huge advertising budget involvement. Those top sports marketers and promoters would face  uphill task selling those games  to prospective advertisers and that means a reduction in revenue for them,’ he argued.

Another marketing practitioner and Chief Executive Officer, Nosak Ltd, Mr Nosa Uwadiae believes the area that will be suffering most is that of telecast.

 ‘This is because the array of sponsors they would have got and the attendant income that would have accrued from that would not be forthcoming since the team that would have been a major attraction for every Nigerian is not participating,’  he argued.

 He, however, believed all hope was not lost for the industry  since some brands might still want to be part of the tournament when it enters its crucial stage.

 No doubt, these are not best of the times for industry, whose loss to the protest has been put at a whooping N2billion. Unfortunately, the ongoing football tourna-ment that would have mitigated the loss has not been able to serve the purpose. Perhaps, a synergy between the sporting community and the industry would help avert such loss in future.