We could reap big from sports tourism

“What gods are you talking about… sometimes we blame God for things He has nothing to do with,” was the immediate reaction I got from a colleague who took the trouble to read my last column.

In his view, the remedy to the Kenyan football disorder is rather straightforward.

First, the authorities should jail all those people who have run the sport to the ground. Then the government should seal all loopholes in the federation’s constitution that inept leadership of the past have used to make their removal from office almost impossible.

Some sound, yet radical, thoughts in my view. But Kenya being the country that it is, such degree of radicalisation would only be frowned upon by a public that idolizes thieves, crooks and the corrupt.

Which is why repentance and supplication to the gods of football remains my best bet to get us out of this rat hole. I rest my case.

I will however graciously recant a statement that I also made on the same column. On the matter of Kenya becoming world football champions, someday – as envisioned by President Uhuru Kenyatta – I said Kenya can only be world champions of corruption, unaccountability and the political nonsense that we are presently being treated to by some conniving seekers of political office.

Apparently, there are a few sports-related activities that would easily produce a Kenyan world champion, betting being one of them. But that’s not what I really have in mind.

In my view – and I stand to be corrected – betting is all a waste of precious time and money that could otherwise be put into better use by an entire generation of youthful Kenyans who nowadays spend all their waking hours chasing that elusive jackpot.

Someone once famously said that Kenyans don’t love football; that they only love drinking beer and gossiping in bars during football matches. Perhaps he was right, back then. However, a few years down the line, good old Nicholas Musonye would reconsider his sagacious views.

On these shores betting has since caught up with and overtaken beer-drinking.

Kenyan pubs no longer get filled up with loud beer-drinking ‘gossipers’ masquerading as fans. Their bar tools have since been taken over by sober gamblers who have little interest in getting drunk.

All is not lost though. If there is one thing that can still be salvaged from the tattered state of sports in this country and utilised for great economic returns, then it has to be sports tourism. Yet, this is an opportunity whose full potential we seem reluctant to tap into.

Look, just this week, in-form Argentinian striker Mauro Icardi, who plies his trade with French moneybags PSG, arrived in Nairobi quietly with his wife for holiday.

Before him, a few weeks earlier, Cameroonian football legend Samuel Eto'o also came calling.

Not long ago, the country also hosted some of the biggest names in athletics, including Jamaican sprint queen Shelly-Ann Fraser-Pryce, reigning Olympic 100m and 200m champion Lamont Marcel Jacobs and 2020 Tokyo Olympics men’s 100m silver medalist Fred Kerley, who were the star attractions in the last edition of the Kip Keino Classic in Nairobi.

Going by what some of these athletes are quoted to have said on the sidelines, they all got a very good first impression of the country. Which begs the question, how many more of such high-profile sports personality would we be hosting every year, if only we tried marketing the country a little bit better?