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Sikhumbuzo Moyo, Acting Sports Editor

FOR many years netball was probably known but not respected until Friday night when Pickglow Trading managing director and owner Aaron Chinhara announced an annual sponsorship package of $11 million for the Rainbow Amateur Netball League (Ranl) through his Glow Petroleum brand.

Chinhara made the announcement during his speech at the second edition of the Ranl End of Year awards held at a top Harare hotel on Friday night that saw various awards being given to individual players and teams that are playing under Ranl, a league that broke away from the netball motherbody Zimbabwe Netball Association (Zina).

“I want to say that things were difficult in 2019 but we decided not to throw you out with the bathing water. We decided to keep you afloat. Our sponsorship for the year 2020 is at least $11 million and when you look at how I calculated that figure I used the parallel rate which is equivalent to US$500 000. So its $11 million today but tomorrow it might be lower or higher depending on inflation and bank rate but the figure of sponsorship is US$500 000. We believe 2020 will be a better year for us as a brand hence this package. We are prepared to review the package further if need be and I don’t think we can fail to reach US1 million. There are however issues at stake as we prepare for 2020. I want to believe that we are still learning our ropes and lets give our administration a chance,” said Chinhara.

He said many times he has been asked why his company decided to sponsor netball instead of any other sport  that might have given Glow Petroleum as a brand more exposure in terms of mileage.

“We however chose netball because we realised that many companies were sponsoring sports disciplines such as soccer, rugby or cricket because they want mileage. We have chosen to sponsor netball because we said to ourselves which sport is failing to get sponsorship? Which sport in Zimbabwe is getting extinct because there is no sponsorship and we setttled for netball. There is no one who wants to sponsor a sport that does not give mileage but we decided to be odd and sponsor netball. At Glow Petroleum we are a ‘girls high’ because out of  more than 1 000 employees, 90 percent are ladies and for that reason we chose to sponsor the girl child. We have realised that women are better managers when they take charge of their affairs than us men,” said Chinhara.

He praised the Ranl leadership that is led by chairperson Melody Garikai .

“The reason why some sports are failing to get  sponsorship is bad governance so as businesspeople we can sponsor any team to anywhere in the world as long as there is good governance,” said Chinhara.