Complete revamp of Liga Malaysia set to garner greater sponsorship, media attention and fan support.

PETALING JAYA ( 26 JANUARY 2011) :The Malaysian Super League Sdn Bhd (MSL), the commercial arm of the Football Association of Malaysia (FAM) today unveiled its plans to take Malaysian football to the next level during the first 2011 Liga Malaysia team briefing held at the Wisma FAM in Kelana Jaya today.

To boost the growth of professional football in Malaysia, MSL believes it’s time that commercial aspects of the sport are improved in line with the developing standard of the game. For this, MSL has outlined a three-pronged approach to provide assistance and support to club and state teams to grow the business side of things mainly in marketing sponsorship, media relations and fan base development.

The briefing was attended by all team representatives participating in the 2011 Liga Malaysia scheduled to kick off this weekend.

During the brief, MSL announced the appointment of its new CEO, Stuart Ramalingam, who is set to spearhead the new initiatives.

The first of the three initiatives is aimed at helping teams make more money through enhanced marketing and promotional efforts. MSL will soon equip club and state sides with the necessary expertise to handle commercial negotiations and providing direction, assistance and support. Even workshops on brand building and sponsorship procurement will also be held for team management and administration staff.

To improve publicity and maximise teams’ exposure in the media, MSL will stress on better media management thus providing guidelines on media relations.

Among the programmes scheduled is a media workshop themed “Making Media work for you - WHY, HOW AND WHEN?”.

To assist teams in building a larger fan base, MSL will also implement a uniformed fan club system for all club and state teams while also providing teams with fan club development strategies.

During the briefing, MSL unveiled Liga Malaysia’s new logo and introduced the participating teams to the commercial rights and activities of media partner ASTRO, which has pledged RM120 million to FAM over the next four years.

ABOUT STUART RAMALINGAM (CEO – MALAYSA SUPER LEAGUE)

Stuart Ramalingam has been a Professionalisation Consultant and Regional Instructor with the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) since 2008. 

As a FIFA Professionalisation Consultant, Stuart specialises in the restructuring and commercialisation of Member Associations’ (MA) footballing products, including:

• Redevelopment and commercial revamping of Professional Leagues and Clubs
• Launching and commercially sustaining MA’s FIFA Grassroots Football initiatives
• Development and branding of MA Football Pyramid, Competition and Development Structures
• Improving and linking relationships between the Government and stakeholders              
• Formularisation of Commercial Strategies for MA and its potential partners
• MA contractual drafting and negotiations
• Organisational Review and Leadership Retreats

As FIFA Regional Instructor, Stuart is assigned to present FIFA’s Futuro lll Administration and Management Courses in the FIFA Development office in this region.

Stuart is the founder of The Brainchild Group, an Integrated Marketing and Communications Agency. Among its subsidiaries are Brainchild Intelligence, Sports Intelligence, Ink PR and Publications and Mogul Works. This Commerce, Business and Technology graduate played football for Selangor and Malaysia between from 1993 to 1996. He also represented the Curtin University Premier League Team (2000-2001), Perth Blues FC (2000-2001) and Western Australia in the Oceania Games (2001). His futsal career saw him don the Melayu Malaysia colours in the National Futsal League (2004-2006), in which he was absorbed into the national side in 2005.