Former Chelsea Captain and England international, Dennis Wise visited Cameroon last week as a guest of Mr. Kingsley Pungong (CEO of Rainbow Inc). Dennis was accompanied by top sports lawyer Kaisor Basar of Madrid based agency INTERLEX sports. Kaisor is noted to have worked with Raphael Benitez, Juan Ramos and some of the top clubs in Spain and England.Speaking to Camfoot, Rainbow INC CEO Mr. Kingsley Pungong commented on the purpose of the visit.
Mr. Pungong, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and Rainbow INC.
Kingsley: Rainbow Inc is an integrated media and sports company with several divisions. It has a marketing and consulting arm, an events group, a content company, an investment fund and is also the holding company for Rainbow Football club/academy. Before founding Rainbow, I worked as Director of Africa projects for a Californian based company (Wasserman Media Group) which is home to the leading agency in the NBA and is also market leader in the English premiere league. Its roster has included such famous names as (Michael Owen, David Beckham, Sir Bobby Charlton, Stephen Gerald, and Alan Shearer amongst others.)
What is the Purpose of Dennis Wise’s visit to Cameroon?
Kingsley: Dennis and Kaisor are good friends/business partners. I invited them to Cameroon to get a feel for Cameroonian football and to see areas in which their experience and expertise could make a difference.
It was reported that Rainbow organised a scouting event at the Douala Stadium. How did that go?
Kingsley: It was not a scouting event. Our aim was to give our guest an opportunity to see the standard of the Cameroonian game. We had a similar event for the Qatar federation a few weeks ago and all our guest were very satisfied with what they saw.
Can you tell us about the NIKE Premiere cup?
Kingsley: Rainbow events division has been appointed by NIKE to organise the county finals for the NIKE Premiere cup in Cameroon. The Nike premiere cup is one of the biggest under-15 tournaments in the world and we are proud that Rainbow is associated with such a prestigious tournament. We organised the first edition last month and DAGA FC of Douala won the tournament. Daga will be representing Cameroon at the Africa finals in Amsterdam on May 16th to May 20th 2010 and we very much look forward to how they would perform. The winner will go on to represent Africa at the world finals at Manchester United in the summer.
Any more high profile guests to visit?
Kingsley: We are looking at inviting some more big name personalities to Cameroon in the future but no names on the cards yet.
Thanks for speaking to us and good luck to you and Rainbow INC.
Kingsley: thanks for having me sir!
