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Sports News of Wednesday, 6 June 2018


#Number12: Zylofon Cash Premier League deal to go if...

The premiering today of a potentially explosive documentary by ace investigative journalist, Anas Aremeyaw Anas, could compel Zylofon Cash to reassess its contractual agreement with the Ghana Football Association (GFA) as headline sponsor of the Zylofon Cash Premier League if contents of the documentary will be damaging to their brand.

The documentary titled ‘#Number 12’ is said to have captured incidents of match-fixing in the Ghana Premier League which was renamed the Zylofon Cash Premier League after the digital and online content monetisation platform inked a five-year-deal reportedly worth $10million with the GFA on May 17.

According to the Communications Director for Zylofon Cash, Halifax Ansah-Addo, his outfit has not yet considered truncating the deal but will remain insulated from any negative fallout after the screening because the contract has exit clauses.

"...I believe every contract has exit clauses, it is not as if we have gone to sign a matter of life and death," Mr Ansah-Addo said in a telephone interview with the Graphic Sports last Monday.

He added, "For the fact that the contract has exit clauses in it there is a possibility of a pullout at some point. We have not considered that option yet because we do not know what the documentary is all about, so let's get there and see for now it is not something we have considered so we are waiting till after Wednesday.

"It's sad people are making it seem as if we knew there was going to be something on Kwesi Nyantakyi (GFA President) and we went ahead and signed with them. So are we saying because there was speculation or something about Nyantakyi we shouldn't do business with the GFA? No, with or without Mr Nyantakyi the FA is still intact, its an institution that predates him and will outdate him".

Mr Ansah-Addo disclosed that Zylofon Cash signed the contract to become headline sponsors of the Ghana Premier League even before allegations from the #Number 12 documentary were made public.

He said even after it became public, it would have been "silly" not to deal with the GFA because of rumours and speculation in the media.

"The fact of the matter is that we signed this deal with the GFA way before Anas made it known that he had an investigative piece to show which would implicate some players of the GFA," Mr Ansah-Addo explained.

"As at then, we had finished signing already but even if we had not signed with them it was just a rumour he was putting out, It would be silly for you not to deal with a corporate entity because there were media speculations that there was going to be a story on them.

"In this country, we have had speculation about every government agency even the Presidency itself, oh the place is corrupt, oh we have investigations on them, oh this minister... but corporate agencies still do business with them, so that is it. For the records, our signing was with the GFA as an institution, not one person as an individual, we believe that the institution is bigger than any individual".

The Ghana Premier League was without a headline sponsor for three seasons following the withdrawal of now-defunct Capital Bank, two years into a five-year headline sponsorship deal worth $10million.