Inglewood has become the home for a new major tourism sponsor.
Visit Rwanda, the official tourism brand of the Rwanda Development Board, has announced a multi-year partnership with both the Los Angeles Clippers and Los Angeles Rams.
It marks the first time any NBA or NFL team has struck a sponsorship deal with an African tourism brand.
Both the Clippers and Rams, with their gameday operations located across the street from each other in Inglewood, will promote the branding of Visit Rwanda in various ways. For the Clippers, it will become their third different jersey patch sponsor since the NBA started allowing jersey ads in 2017.
Jean-Guy Afrika, CEO of the Rwanda Development Board, spoke to the long-term partnerships with both franchises and why Los Angeles was the optimal choice.
“Sport connects people, uniting communities through shared values of excellence and
aspiration,” Afrika said. “Through sponsorships with the LA Clippers and LA Rams, Rwanda and Los Angeles unite to promote the spirit of the game. This engagement enables us to export Rwanda’s unrivaled natural beauty and extraordinary biodiversity to the people of Los Angeles as well as NBA and NFL fans everywhere.”
Jean-Guy Afrika stands with LA Rams President Kevin Demoff and Halo Sports and Entertainment CEO Gillian Zucker at SoFi Stadium
Visit Rwanda
Visit Rwanda is an initiative designed to showcase the country’s culture, landscapes, and wildlife experiences while attracting more tourists.
This isn’t the first athletic partnership for them, however. They have struck deals with soccer clubs Arsenal FC, Atlético de Madrid, and Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) as well.
For the NBA, this is a continuation of the league’s globalization. Over the 20 years, basketball’s popularity overseas has soared. And most people only think of Europe or China when the topic of international fan interest is mentioned.
However, Africa has also been at the forefront of these collaborative efforts. The Basketball Africa League (BAL) was created in 2019 and kicked off its inagural season two years later. For the first four years of the BAL’s existence, the playoffs took place at BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda.
Basketball Without Borders became an important stepping stone for the sport in 2001, launched and organzied by the NBA’s partnership with FIBA. Two years after the program’s initial summer camp, Africa hosted their very first event and opened a new talent stream for NBA scouts to consider.
The Los Angeles Rams are hoping to bring a new and more diverse wave of football fans into the mix, with this sponsorship giving them more exposure across the globe.
“This is a tremendous opportunity to have Visit Rwanda sponsor SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park,” said Otto Maly, President of Kroenke Holdings. “SoFi Stadium and Hollywood Park were built to be the World Stage and a true international destination. We are pleased to have the Rwanda Development Board choose to promote tourism and travel to Rwanda here at Hollywood Park, which will host a historic string of global events over the next few years.”
Clippers Aim to Drive More Youth Involvement in Basketball
In addition to becoming the jersey patch sponsor for the Clippers’ game and practice uniforms, Visit Rwanda will be an official tourism sponsor of the franchise. The Clippers are supporting the globalization of basketball and aiming to get more youth involved – both in terms of playing the sport and drawing more NBA fans.
The Clippers’ new jersey patch with Visit Rwanda branding
Credit: LA Clippers
Gillian Zucker, President of Business Operations for the LA Clippers, spoke about what this partnership means for their long-term strategy of growing the sport overseas.
“The NBA in general is really looking toward the globalization of the game, and there’s just a tremendous confidence in the future of Africa,” Zucker said. “In fact, I thought this was crazy, but more than half of the top 20 fast and growing economies in the world are in Africa.”
To Zucker’s point, the youth population is booming across the continent.
Ten years ago, 226 million people aged 15-24 lived in Africa, according to the United Nations. By the time 2030 arrives, that number is expected to be 42% larger. As the New York Times outlined, one in four people on the planet will be African by the year 2050.
“So when you turn specifically to Rwanda, there’s been significant investment in their infrastructure, their technology, their education, and in their youth,” Zucker added. “They’ve got youth that’s increasingly digitally connected.”
Focusing on the advancement of youth sports isn’t a new phenomenon for the franchise.
In 2018, Clippers owner Steve Ballmer took a smaller-scale initiative of reburbishing a few basketball courts in Los Angeles and transformed it into one of the most charitable programs in the city’s history. Ballmer and Zucker launched a program that donated more than $10 million to the LA Parks Foundation to renovate nearly 500 community courts across Southern California – not just the L.A. area.
That’s why any time an opportunity presents itself to reach more young athletes and help provide kids with more access to sports, the Clippers don’t shy away.
This new partnership also includes court refurbishments and coaching clinics across the country of Rwanda, which was a huge point of emphasis for both parties.
“We’ve really leaned into the fact that we want everyone to be able to have access to basketball within walking distance of their home here in Los Angeles,” Zucker said. “In that same way, this type of structure isn’t available worldwide, and those will be things that we lean into with this partnership to help create more opportunities for young people in Rwanda to play basketball as well.”
As evidenced by the atmosphere at the BAL playoffs every year, Rwanda is home to avid sports fans and a younger population that’s also seeking economic opportunities.
Zucker believes it goes beyond the physical nature of what sports provides. Within athletics, especially at a younger age, there are certain principles that are learned and eventually applied to other aspects of your life.
“Sports are something that’s really important for youth development,” Zucker said. “I mean, the characteristics that sports teaches to young people, it’s all about collaboration and cooperation. It’s about teamwork. It’s about the competitive advantage, as well as how you handle yourself in times where things don’t exactly go your way. These are all characteristics that are so important for young people to learn.”
Rams Look to Expand American Football Interest Globally
With the Los Angeles Rams also securing Visit Rwanda as an international tourism sponsor, this partnership becomes an important landmark for the NFL.
While it’s true that basketball and soccer are widely popular on the international scale, American Football continues rising in other countries. A major part of that is how accessible the content is through social media channels compared to 20 years ago. There’s more opportunities for youth in other continents to learn about the players, which is arguably the most important component of any sports fandom.
Now, with Rwanda looking to draw more eyes and tourism possibilities, there’s arguably no greater place to spread the message than Los Angeles, the second-largest city in the United States.
When fans attend SoFi Stadium, one of the premier sporting venues in the world that can be expanded to fit 100,000 people, they will see Visit Rwanda signage throughout the building.
Spectators will walk into the West Owners Club (on Level 2) and the North Canyon Basin (on Level 3) and be met with innovative designs on the walls that highlight the nature of Rwanda and its landscape – hopefully inspiring football fans to book a fun vacation during the NFL offseason.
Visit Rwanda will also have digital ads playing on Sofi Stadium’s 70,000 square foot Infinity Screen, in addition to LED displays across Hollywood Park, the entertainment complex connected to the venue.
Kevin Demoff, President of the Los Angeles Rams, spoke with Forbes about the franchise’s motivation to bring in more international sponsors. Specifically, they are always looking to expand their reach in places football might not be prominent, driving interest for the NFL and building the Rams fanbase.
“One of our key priorities when we moved back to Los Angeles and built SoFi Stadium in Hollywood Park was making the Rams a global brand,” Demoff said. “We have rights throughout Asia and the Pacific Rim, Australia, Mexico. Last year, we got rights in the UAE and we’ve really been looking for a way to engage with Africa and find a way to bring the Rams brand greater notoriety throughout the continent.”
Because of the Rams’ long-standing relationship with Arsenal, they already had a connection to Visit Rwanda. Demoff says it was a natural fit to engage with the brand because of how strong of a “global showcase” SoFi Stadium has been since it opened five years ago.
Visit Rwanda’s Process, and why Los Angeles was the top choice
Jean-Guy Afrika detailed to Forbes how strategic the process had to be. Nothing happens overnight, especially with signficant overhauls within your country. This has been every bit of a 22-year process to reach this point.
Rwanda’s commitment to the plan started in 2003 when the country made a deliberate decision to focus on high-end tourism. First realizing they had virtually no tourism infrastructure, such as hotels to accomodate guests or adequate transportational components, that’s where most of the efforts began.
Once the strategy was clear, Rwanda needed to install different types of tourism experiences. They originally pinpointed a few different activities such as gorilla trekking, canopy walking, and mountain climbing. Those ideas expanded into more avenues to utilize the Nyungwe Forest in southwest Rwanda and the Volcanoes National Park in the northwest region of the country.
Investing in different airlines was also a top priority, ensuring they could connect as many people to the area as possible.
When it became time to partner with major sporting brands, the first step was European soccer because of the high level of interest. Eventually, though, the decision was made to venture into United States opportunities – and it was a long process to pinpoint which teams and organizations made the most sense.
They narrowed down their options and put their focus on Los Angeles. According to Afrika, the United States still represents the largest portion of Rwanda’s tourism revenues, and LA’s demographics aligned closely with the type of people who typically visit their country.
“Figuring out which ones to focus on was was the initial challenge,” Afrika said. “But but when you look at the profile of the state itself, the fact that I believe it’s one of the highest income groups in the US … it has the profile of a person with a high likelihood of traveling. Then, the choice was almost natural.”
Like Zucker, he believes this partnership shouldn’t only be about getting Rwanda on the map. By encouraging more athletic involvement and creating more avenues for the youth to participate within their communities should have a greater impact that transcends generations.
“Beyond just using sports as a way to raise a sports partnership as a way to raise awareness, there’s also the values that that we’re trying to instill in our society,” Afrika said. “Values that you know, arguably not no other medium does better than sports values like excellence, discipline, team spirits, values that … even after you’ve played, continue to shape how you behave in society.”
In a way, while tourist attraction is vastly important to African countries such as Rwanda, building a powerful culture plays a major role in its future. Sports deliver a pathway for that.
“Sports has really taken an integral part in the Rwanda of tomorrow and it’s a continuation,” Afrika expressed. “We’re very excited about this partnership.”