By Francis H. Murray
Amidst growing concern over the effect of the coronavirus disease (Covid-19) on Sierra Leone’s economy, the country’s media has already taken a major hit, with news of the shutting down of a major source of revenue.
The leading sport-betting company in the country, Mercury International, said last week that it would put on hold adverts worth hundreds of millions of leones to newspapers due to the fall in its revenue as a result of the effect of the global pandemic on the football leagues in the world.
Mercury relies on international football matches for its betting, which attracts hundreds of millions of leones. Through this the company had been a major funder of many media houses, especially in the print segment.
A spokesman for the company told Politico that it disbursed over Le500 million to newspapers as payment for adverts every month.
“As a precautionary measure worldwide for the Covid-19, all major leagues in different countries in the world were put on hold and we’re getting these fixtures from these global competitions, and these fixtures are the major sport betting products that we give out to newspapers for publication in the form of adverts.”, says Alhaji Komba, Public Relations Manager of Mercury International.
He said that if the fixtures were not coming anymore, “then there is no product for the sports betting, so it affects the business greatly”.
Mercury also runs a non-sports betting, but the company says the revenues from that end are negligible.
“The reason for any business is to maximize profit and in the event wherein your expenditure far outweighs your income, it means there’s no business and that’s the situation we find ourselves in,” added Komba.
Mercury’s decision takes effect on 1 April. And this has left publishers worried, in an industry where almost 100 % of the papers depend on revenue from advertising. Some say they are contemplating shutting down their print edition and focusing on online publication which itself does not have advertising.
Emmanuel Saffa Abdulai, proprietor of the NewsWatch newspaper, doesn’t yet know his immediate next step, but he is certain that the withdrawal will have a negative effect on his publication.
“We cannot afford to run the paper anymore without the usual support in the form of adverts from Mercury because they cover our overhead cost of production,” Saffa told Politico.
“Mercury is the biggest sponsor of freedom of expression in the country because even when some newspapers in the country do not fulfill the criteria for payment, they are still given support,” he said.
‘‘Even the entertainment industry, although it has been politicized, is going to be extremely affected because they also benefit from Mercury,’’ Saffa added.
Thomas Dixon, proprietor of the New Age Newspaper, is contemplating shutting down the print edition of his paper.
Dixon said the decision by Mercury would affect every aspect of his business because they relied on the company’s adverts for both production and staff salary.
“So we’re going to be affected extremely to the extent that we’re not going to publish as frequent as we did prior to this decision. We’re even going to resort to staff redundancy because we don’t have big industries that invest in advertising. And for us, we’re not always given adverts from the government because that’s a way of dealing with us. So we do not have any alternative to the situation but to start publishing online,’’ he said.
Mercury says it does business with about 90% of newspapers.
Officials of the company told Politico that the management was also looking at a temporary solution aimed at cushioning the effect of its decision on the newspapers by maintaining a limited number of adverts with the papers.
But newspapers are not the only victims of Mercury’s decision.
Operators of its Redbox, who sell the betting tickets and help the gamblers play the different games, have been left to deal with a huge drop in sales due to the closure of the leagues.
One of the Redbox operators, William Sawyerr, told Politico that the indefinite halt on sports betting, especially football, meant that he was selling far less than before.
“Before now, we used to make between Le 3 million to Le 5 million daily from sales, but now the highest we make is Le400, 000,” he said at his station in the central business district of Freetown.
Sawyerr said because football was no longer playing, most youths had withdrawn from betting,
“You hardly see a young man playing lotto (non-sports betting) game. So this affects our take-home because we do a 50/50 business, which means the higher your sales per day, the higher your take-home,’’ Sawyerr added.
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