Deciphering the lack of fans

Poor turn up. Matches at Cecafa have been shunned by many soccer fans

The Cecafa tournament is a week old now and already some positives can be picked out of the marsh that is Namboole, after the rains that pounded Kampala for two straight days. Uganda as expected is already in the quarter finals. This is a sponsor’s dream as it keeps interest in the event bubbling along nicely. And judging from Ethiopia B’s performances I can’t wait to see Ethiopia A at Afcon next year.

But all of the positives are dampened by the sheer emptiness (pun intended) of the games. Fans are not turning up for the games and this must be a nightmare for television crews. It surely is hollowing to drum up interest in a football game whose backdrop is rows upon rows of empty seats.

Yes there is an issue of inadequate appeal for games involving the regions’ minnows. Getting to a mid-week game between Zanzibar and Eritrea in the Kampala east-bound evening traffic is not without its traumas. But attendance figures are appalling even for the hosts and other regional ‘powers’.

Call them fair weather fans, but Ugandans love The Cranes. The average competitive Cranes game regardless of the opponent attracts 40,000. Why then did the East African Derby last Saturday only attract 10,000 fans? Okay for all intents and purposes Cecafa is a side show, and the real party kicks off Johannesburg next month. But one still has to ask where did all the people go?

Of course it may seem unreasonable to expect high numbers at a tournament that is increasingly being used by most as a nursery for the future. And besides the television pictures from Kenya and Tanzania in previous years didn’t exactly reveal stadia coming apart at the seams with fans! So it isn’t like this problem is Ugandan specifically, but neither should that fact stop us from examining why there is a 300% drop in attendance for a Uganda Cranes game at Namboole on a Saturday!

The reasons cannot be economic because the pavilion priced at Shs20,000 had more people than the open stands priced at Shs5,000. This is very competitive pricing for a Cranes football game at Namboole and considerably cheaper than the last game The Cranes played there even if admittedly the stakes were higher.

Maybe we are still mourning the failures of October and our staying away is a demonstration of that grief.

If so we need to stop feeling sorry for ourselves and get on with it. Our failed campaign must be put firmly behind us and Cecafa ought to be used as the psychological remedy it is for our disappointments. The future starts now and this is when we build tomorrow’s teams.
But also let’s not rule out the possibility that this is perhaps a protest by some, a refusal to be associated with our football and all its accompanying vices. If that is the case then we have a big problem on our hands, one which even free entrance will not solve.
Either way die-hards like us will still go and watch because we believe staying away doesn’t resolve matters but majorly because we just love the game and to us everything else is what is it supposed to be in the first place secondary!

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