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Optima Sports Management International (OSMi), the official broadcasters the UEFA Champions League Competitions for sub-Saharan Africa, has partnered with MTech to provide mobile interactive solutions for the matches.
The initiative which is called “Africa 11” is a game which has been running since the beginning of this season’s UEFA Champions League competition, in September. The game will have 11 winners, selected from a number of African Countries including Nigeria, and have them sponsored to watch the final match of the UEFA Champion’s League, at the Stade de France in Paris, in May 2006. To qualify, subscribers need to answer an advertised question, by sending a text message beginning with the letters “CFI#”, to 35050. Different questions will be run every 2 months, and the winners will be picked from a draw. Questions are currently being advertised on the OSMi partner TV stations including; AIT, Silverbird, MBI and DBN during the matches.
OSMi is an integrated group of sports marketing and service companies whose specialties include Sports Marketing, Events Management & Accreditation/ Event Ticketing, Broadcast Rights Acquisition & Marketing. OSMi’s project references include International Cup 2001, “Unity CUP” – of which they are event owners; World Cup France 1998, Olympic Games 2004, Africa Nations Cup 2004 and FIFA Under-17 2003. Mr. Rotimi Pedro, the Managing Director of OSMi, stated that “OSMi is unarguably, Nigeria’s leading sports marketing company. Since inception, we have strived for higher standards in sports marketing and management. Our passion, powered by an overriding commitment to excellence, and the will to continuously provide world class sports entertainment, informed our choice of MTech as technical partners”.
According to Mr. Hakeem Abdulraheem, Head, Product Development & Operations at MTech, “MTech has consistently demonstrated its technical expertise and deep understanding of the mobile entertainment needs of Nigerians and Africans”. This partnership between OSMi and MTech is a synergy of the top players in their respective industries and will go a long way to enhance mobile entertainment to mobile phone subscribers on the African continent”.
Other initiatives deployed by MTech in partnership with OSMi includes, an SMS competition titled “Jersey Number 12” which ran from August – September. The competition was won by Makinwa Agbede from Abule-Egba in Lagos. And his prize was a full VIP, all expense paid trip to Abuja, to watch the Nigeria- Zimbabwe World Cup qualifying match. Other prizes such as mobile phones were also won. The other initiative was an SMS – TV solution deployed during the Tunisia 2004 African Cup of Nations, which allowed subscribers to send messages and watch them being scrolled live during the matches.
The ongoing 25th edition of the African Cup of Nations has thrown the whole of Africa into frenzy, with 8 successful teams, including Nigeria, advancing in the competition. MTech, the nations premier value added service provider, has been running several, private and joint, sports interactive competitions, and has also began to reward successful participants.
The “Predict and Win” competition, which has been running, on Complete Sports magazine, since the beginning of the Nations Cup Competition, has produced several winners with the completion of the first round of the tournament. Winners of N10, 000 cash prizes include; Dozie Ibuakah, from Benin, Oluseyi Abraham Ojediran, from Lagos, and Alabi Johnson Paul from Lagos. Other consolation prizes such as GSM Recharge Cards of various denominations were also given out to winners. The winners expressed their pleasure and excitement in receiving the cash prize, of which they originally doubted its reality. The Managing Director of MTech, Mr. Chika Nwobi, presented their prizes to them, at the MTech Head office in Lagos, on 2nd of February 2006.
According to Alabi, one of the winners, “my friends and I did not believe in the competition at first but now I am a believer and I will spread the word… ” Ojediran had this to say, “I am very glad I won and I am looking forward to participating in the next one”. The third winner, Dozie, was not present as he is not a resident of Lagos. However, the MTech boss assured him that his prize money would be sent to him soonest.
In a statement by MTech’s Product Manager, Mr. Elo Umeh, “MTech aims at leveraging mobile technology with various fields like finance, marketing, media, sports…etc in order to keep people always connected to services that are vital to their everyday lives. It is in line with our goal of ‘empowering the mobile generation’ to look beyond seeing their mobile phone as just instruments of simple communication, but a tool for more interactive and productive applications”.
MTech is running other Nations Cup competitions promos in conjunction with her partners, Sportsville Communications and Premium Sports Management Services (PSMS). MTech deployed SMS-based solutions for their promos and provides technical support for them.
On the program run by Sportsville on Silverbird TV, questions are asked on every match day, and subscribers’ are to send their answers, as a text message beginning with “Egypt#” to number 33050. At the end of the tournament, the subscriber with the highest number of correct answers through out the duration of the program stands the chance of winning a car. The competition also runs on AIT.
While on PSMS, which runs a sports program on NTA 2, Lagos, subscribers predict the quarter finalists of the competition, by sending the names of the countries, beginning with “PSMS#”, as a text message, to 33050.
MTech also runs other mobile interactive competitions in collaboration with her media partners, Cool FM and Cosmo FM, for the Tournament. The “Predict and Win competition still runs on both radio stations, giving participants chances to participate and win great prizes.
Our commitment to our customers is steadfast, helpful and energetic. At Mtech, we serve clients from all major industry segments. We have a different way of working with clients, which allows us to build deep trust based partnerships with our clients, which often endure over years, and in some cases decades.
