Locker Room Sports opening doors for KSAFA’s youth
LOCKER ROOM Sports has engineered a ‘special’ partnership for youth football in the Corporate Area to provide teams in the Kingston and St Andrew Football Association (KSAFA) junior competitions with match outfits from Admiral Sports, the second oldest sporting brand in the world.
The deal is an extension of Locker Room Sports’ long-time relationship with KSAFA, one of the leading confederations in the country. David Shirley, CEO of the gear and equipment company, has expressed satisfaction that the initial benefactors are the city’s youth.
Those immediately benefiting are clubs in the Alliance Moneygram-McKay Security KSAFA Under-20 League, which got underway recently.
“This year is a very special year because we’re starting off with the youth programmes, where we’ve formed a partnership with Admiral Sports and they will be supplying all the gear for the youth programmes in KSAFA,” outlined Shirley.
“Locker Room has been a partner with KSAFA for the past eight years throughout the presidency of Rudolph Speid, Stewart Stephenson, and now, Wayne Shaw. So we’ve served under all three presidents in terms of partnering and supplying them with sportswear and helping them with marrying sponsorship opportunities with
equipment for the leagues and clubs,” he pointed out.
A big part of assisting the clubs is more than just supplying the gear, Shirley noted, as Locker Room Sports actually seeks the opportunity through merged links with sponsors, the parent body and clubs.
“What we do is try to show companies the opportunities that KSAFA brings to the table in terms of the different communities that they touch and we also, based on experience of being in the business for over 20 years, have an idea of which product would go well with the type of sport,” explained Shirley.
“So once we’re able to link those corporate relationships with KSAFA, we then deal with the printing and placement and branding of the gear.”
He added: “Part of the thing that makes this whole process possible is the negotiations with the sports brands. We negotiate with them so that we get better pricing to allow the whole deal to go through because, under normal conditions, the prices that we’d be offering sponsors to come on board at would be almost doubled if we were paying the retail price on the uniforms.
“So essentially, we’re providing the gear at a subsidised cost to be able to allow sponsors to come on board and partake in supporting the programme,” said Shirley.