McKay bats for collective bargaining amid SCFA teams’ sponsorship

ROLLING OUT his vision for a partnership between corporate Jamaica and football clubs en bloc that include ramping up the latter’s marketability and welfare of athletes in one swing, McKay Security’s chief executive officer, Jason McKay, last Thursday handed over 300 pairs of Puma football boots to 20 teams participating in the upcoming season of the St Catherine Football Association’s (SCFA) Division One and Major League competitions.

The select teams will play the new season as brand ambassadors for McKay Security in a sponsorship, which started with McKay Security first handing over 400 footballs and 35 team kits in what McKay described as “direct sponsorship” of teams in SCFA, totalling $6 million in equipment.

Peter Reid, former president of SCFA, hailed McKay Security’s sponsorship as historic, comparing it to telecommunications company LIME’s three-year $15 million sponsorship of the association 14 years ago.

“There has been nothing like this since the LIME sponsorship,” said Reid. “In fact, no other parish association has anything like this in place,” said the football stalwart.

McKay noted that the boot sponsorship was a costly, but necessary undertaking.

“The boots are costly. However, Western Sports, similar to Locker Room Sports, who provided the team kits, offered us great prices because we were negotiating for so many teams. This is the approach that needs to be taken, not each team approaching a supplier,” he pointed out.

“The boot sponsorship is, by far, the largest of the three deals. Unlike the balls and gear that were offered to all teams, the Puma deal was limited to 20 teams, based on the close working relationship McKay Security has had with the executives of those teams.”

He pointed out that McKay Security’s sponsorship past the 2025 season is to be decided but assured that the McKay Security sports programme will be “very visible and active with the 20 teams for this season”.

“We are optimistic and would like to extend assistance to 10 more in the near future but, similar to any other corporate sponsorship, the relationship with those teams must represent and coincide with the values of the McKay Security Sports programme,” McKay stated.

Meanwhile, McKay, who recently lost a bid for presidency of St Catherine Football Association (SCFA), chided the association for what he described as “forcing teams to sign away their rights by affiliation” ahead of the new season.

Royal Lakes, one of the McKay Security-sponsored teams, had successfully filed an injunction against SCFA, preventing the association from conducting elections on July 28, 2024, alleging breaches of the association’s constitution.

Royal Lakes was afterwards sanctioned by SCFA for breaching FIFA rules of taking the association to court, outside the prescribed route of article 54 of the FIFA Statutes, which states that its football tribunal “shall pass decisions relating to football-related disputes and regulatory applications”.

However, McKay argued that the Jamaica Football Federation, the governing body of local football, should amend its stance of “not interfering” in parish-association matters by acting as a mediator between clubs and their parish affiliates.