Leading alcoholic beverage producers in the country, Castel Malawi Limited has affirmed its sponsorship of Castel Challenge Cup by hiking the package to K400 million from K320 million.
Castel Malawi introduced the football cup last year and after a successful run, the company has come back bigger, with this season’s launch set for Champions Stadium at Mponela in Dowa on Saturday.
The company’s Head of Corporate Marketing and Communication, Lavern Chitakata officially announced the hike at Mpira village in Blantyre on Monday when, together with the Football Association of Malawi (FAM), conducted the draw for the first phase which involves teams from lower leagues from the Southern Region.
Chitakata expressed optimism of having a more successful season than last year where more talent was unearthed in the remote areas.
“From what we have learned from last season, we are aiming at growing the game even bigger. As announced, we are going to launch this edition in Mponela. It is another remote area, but we are trying to reach out to more regions and more districts. We will also have another kickoff here in the South and the other one in the North.”
“So as much as we are kicking off this weekend, there are two more games that we are kicking off in all the regions to make sure that people understand that we have come into the regions and we are moving forward,” said Chitakata.
Southern Region Football Association (SRFA) Chairman, Raphael Humba, promised fireworks from his teams in this competition.
“We are very grateful to Castel Malawi for bringing back the competition. We are expecting a lot from our teams and we are hoping to achieve more than what we achieved last season. We had Lipulumundu FC that faced FCB Nyasa Big Bullets at the national level and this season, we are looking past the Round of 64. With an improved package, we are expecting our teams to work hard and achieve more,” he said.
Apart from 16 super league teams, 99 teams from lower leagues will participate in this year’s competition.
