We Plan To Make The NLO Better, Bigger And Exciting – Sola Ogunowo
By Akeem Busari
The leadership of the National League One (NLO), widely acknowledged as Nigeria and Africa’s largest amateur football championship, have reiterated its commitment towards making the league, better, bigger and more exciting for all participants including football operators, investors and sponsors.
Speaking with journalists, the Chief Operating Officer of NLO, Sola Ogunowo, disclosed that the organisation is bent on improving the quality of the league, with more end-of-the season tournaments.
“At the end of every league season, the NLO, usually have 3 cup tournaments, namely, the NLO Cup, for 25 champion clubs from the second cadre in the NLO. This tournament is designed to further expose our best teams that got promoted to the next level through a scouting tournament powered by Afriskaut, using their Ai driven technology.
“The second one is NLO Super League. This tournament is designed for some supposed good teams that are unfortunate not to be promoted. This tournament is to keep the teams busy, as well as, expose them to international markets.
“The last one is the Super 8, this is for the premier division teams in NLO and it is to determine the overall winner of our top division for 2024 season.”
The hardworking and astute football administrator, continued, “we earlier announced N964 million through New Year Mega Lottery title Sponsorship. We must let you know that this money is not all in cash, but all add-ons, which includes Value in Kind(VIK).
“For example all clubs in NLO were presented with 5 soccer balls each, series of souvenirs, jersey badges and other incentives. Now we have Afriskaut NLO Cup, and we look forward to announce two more before our next cup tournament event. Then we get supports from FIFA through NFA.”
He further disclosed plans to make the NLO more attractive for all participants, by creating more tournaments, to keep engaging all clubs after, the short league period due to the economic situations in the country.
“We are also working on having facial recognition on our player registrations portal to further deter poaching of players by some clubs,” he added conclusively.
