Africa-Press – Eswatini. Fans and the general public woke up to a costly surprise yesterday in as far as this year’s MoMo Cup’s ongoing voting process is concerned.
While it had been free all this time since the second edition was launched on July 11, this year to check the votes update on a daily basis and also vote for your club, all that changed yesterday. To get an update on the votes, one has to press *7000#, which was free as well as the voting but as of yesterday, the update and voting now costs three (3) cents, respectively. If one checks the update only, the charge will be three cents but doing both will double the fee to six (6) cents.
“It doesn’t just end with the charges, which are against what was presented at the launch and it is what we had been experiencing until this sudden change. What the sponsor has also done is limit the voters to only 10 000 votes a day, regardless of one team having way more than that. “It’s very disturbing to say the least especially because it’s clear that towards the final days of voting next month, there can be upsets given the rate at which clubs are voting and even those that have not even voted to the one million mark, they can qualify with a good investment of cash before the September 18 deadline but now it will be more money for MTN.
“Being limited to 10 000 votes a day for each fan could also mean those who are already ahead may be hard to catch if all the top six or seven teams have their fans add 10 000 votes each a day,” decried an impeccable source, whose team is also within the chasing pack for the top six spots to play either in the play-offs or main day tournament. One club owner, who called this publication around lunch to express his shock, on condition of anonymity, wondered what the sponsor; MTN Fintech was thinking introducing charges way after the launch and the release of this year’s edition of Rules and Regulations.
Unfair
“This is making the voting unfair and outside of the tournament launch declaration and killing the competition as those who are ahead may well stay there until the deadline day. This is not okay for us who run smaller clubs, as it now puts us at a disadvantage even if we could still overtake those ahead of us but it will be expensive,” he said. A couple other teams said they also noticed it and said this was certainly one of the issues to be discussed tomorrow when the Premier League of Eswatini (PLE) holds its annual general meeting at Sigwaca House, Mbabane. MoMo Cup Public Relations Officer (PRO) Thabiso Manyatsi said they had also noticed the latest charge for checking the updates yesterday morning.
“We’re going to have a meeting about it later today as an MC as we also learnt about it in the morning. As for the limit per fan, I believe it is a matter of communication by the teams with their supporters as they were called into a meeting, which was held on a Wednesday, where they were informed of the limit each fan had,” he said. There was no immediate response from the PLE Marketing Officer, Lindiwe ‘Malindi’ Dlamini, as her phone rang without being answered when sought for comment. It is anticipated the MoMo Cup Management Committee (MC) will give its update on the latest charge as it was not communicated even to the clubs.
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