The story behind Rayon Sports’ fan registration drive

Rayon Sports football club last week kicked off a nationwide fan registration process that intends to inform the club about the accurate data of the club’s fan base. The club has so far registered over 15 000 fans in its database after just three days, something that is not as impressive as expected, according to club Spokesperson, Jean Paul Nkurunziza, compared to how big the club’s fan base is. Although many people acknowledge the Blues have the biggest fan base in the country, the club wasn’t able to present concrete figures of supporters while negotiating partnership deals with a number of potential sponsors. Some reports suggest that 2/3 of Rwanda’s football fans support Rayon sports. The club uses such numbers during negotiation with potential partners. However, a new move to register the club’s supporters across the country was put into force to be able to help the club raise revenue from their loyal fans and also help them negotiate with corporate companies who want to partner with the Blues. If the registration drives yields good results, Nkurunziza says the club will sign a whooping Rwf 400 million with a new partner. The deal would have been signed but the partner told the club to first conduct a survey and present the exact number of fans supporting Rayon Sport in order to know how big its visibility or the ‘volume of consumption’ could look like. “There is a deal on table which the club expects to sign with a potential partner but we were requested to do the survey and present the exact number of fans we have before considering the deal. We need the fans to show the club their pride and register so we can be able to get the deal signed as soon as possible,” Nkurunziza said. “During negotiations, we have always said we have a big number of supporters. But we don’t have a specific number because no survey has ever been conducted. We have more pending deals which could be signed after the survey is done,” he added. The fan ID number will help the supporters have access to the soon-to-be opened club shop, Gikundiro Shop, from which they will be able to buy some of the club’s brand equipment like jerseys, wristbands and scarves among others. Every club supporter with a fan ID number will also have access to real time club updates, communiques, valuable information about the team’s daily activities and future services that will be offered by the club. The first numbers from the fan registration exercise will be announced on March 15. The club management is also looking at alternatives of giving updates on a daily basis. “Some might think that we are targeting contributions from our supporters but it is far from the truth. If it were the case we would have charged fans Rwf 10, 000 instead of Rwf300 to register. The main objective is to know the exact number of supporters for proper budget planning,” He explained. Financial constraints Rayon Sports may have the most football fans in the country but the club has over the years failed to turn that opportunity into revenue collection. The club has always been besieged by financial woes season after season. When Rayon elected a new committee last year, a meeting was held with fan club representatives where they shared about 150 challenges afflicting the club, most of them were financial. According to minutes from the meeting, 47 per cent of challenges that the club faces were blamed on bad administration, 26 per cent on bad management, 13 per cent on poor team performances and 7 per cent on financial mismanagement. The fan clubs suggested that the crisis will end should the club address its administrative and management issues. Fan registration is one of Rayon Sports’ 11 key areas of intervention that the club will count on during the next four years, including governance, management and business, finance and income generation for long-term sustainability. Others include football development (youth and elite), legal framework, capacity building, infrastructure development, ICT, partnership and social development as well as PR and Communication.