MWAMISI: Arsenal celebration: Why Kenyans invest so much in a game that changes nothing local

I wanted the noise to stop on Sunday.

On Sunday, Nairobi moved for Arsenal. Jerseys on matatus. TVs outside kiosks. Men arguing in sheng like Parliament was in session. The city held its breath until the final whistle, and when it was over, the streets did not empty. They erupted.

That is the paradox. The same city that can fill pubs for Arsenal will not fill Kasarani for Shabana. The same fans who will spend Sh5,000 to watch a foreign club will not spend Sh200 to watch a local one.

We have no shares in that club. It is not our league. It is not our players, our coaches, our communities. Yet we shut down commerce, drain disposable income and invest our collective emotion in a result that changes nothing in our lives.

And this is not new. In May 2024, after Arsenal failed to clinch the English Premier League title on the final day, a video circulated online showing a Kenyan man in an Arsenal jersey taking his own life.

The claim spread: that he did it because Arsenal lost the title to Manchester City. Fact-checkers noted the only source was a Kenyan X account, and no major Kenyan news outlet published or confirmed the incident.

The verdict was “unproven”. But whether that specific case is verified or not, the pattern is documented. Fact-checkers themselves said it “seems to align with a 2009 story of an Arsenal fan committing suicide after the club lost to Manchester United”. The fact that we must fact-check this at all tells you something: our devotion to foreign football has, in places, crossed from passion into pathology.

Meanwhile, our own Kenyan Premier League plays in silence.

So let us study what we are not doing. England did not arrive at a £6.7 billion domestic TV deal for 2025-29 by accident. That’s £1.67 billion per season from UK broadcasters alone.

Add overseas rights and the Premier League generates £3.84 billion every season. Even the club that finishes 20th receives £122 million. But the money does not terminate at the Emirates. It circulates.

EY’s 2023-24 report shows the Premier League and its clubs contributed £4.4 billion in tax to HM Treasury, with £2.1 billion from players and staff alone. That is income tax, PAYE, National Insurance Contributions. It pays for hospitals, teachers, infrastructure.

The broadcast revenue you send to London is part of a chain that employs a nurse in Manchester. The league also generated £9.8 billion in gross value added to the UK economy and supports more than 100,000 full-time jobs. Kit manufacturers, broadcast crews, data analysts, stadium staff. Football became an industry, not a pastime.

Then there is the pyramid. A total £343.9 million was distributed last year to wider football: Football Foundation, Stadia Fund, EFL Solidarity, youth development, community projects. Another £146.8 million went directly to lower league clubs.

A total £1.6 billion was committed 2022-25 into grassroots, academies and women’s football. That is why a 12-year-old in Birmingham trains on a proper pitch, with proper balls, under a qualified coach. Because the revenue from Arsenal vs Man City on TV built that field.

Now, Kenya. Walk into most estates in Nairobi, Kisumu, Eldoret, or Garissa and ask: where is the nearest public field with goals, nets and balls? Most children will point to dust.

A bare patch behind a school. If there is a ball, it is half-deflated and shared by 30 boys. If there is a coach, he is unpaid. Our grassroots clubs are suffocating.

No sponsors. No kits. No transport. So, our boys have no careers to pursue. The ones who make it leave. The rest quit at 17. Yet the fan base we command is more than sufficient to sustain the KPL – if we redirected that same energy inward.

Consider the counterfactual: what if we treated the KPL like we treat the EPL? Imagine 500,000 Kenyans purchasing a KPL season pass. Imagine Kasarani, Bukhungu and Kipchoge Keino stadiums half full every weekend at Sh200 a ticket. Imagine county governments ring-fencing that revenue for sport.

Ticket revenue is predictable. A club averaging 5,000 fans at Sh200 makes Sh1 million a matchday. In 15 home games, that is Sh15 million. That procures nets. It procures balls. It grades a pitch. It installs floodlights on a community field so children can train at 6 pm after school. EPL Stadia Fund exists because clubs had revenue to reinvest. We can replicate that model.

With steady income, clubs can hire youth coaches, run U13, U15, U17 sides and scout beyond Nairobi. Today, talent is buried in villages because there is no structure to identify it. The EPL’s £146.8 million EFL Solidarity payment exists to keep that pipeline alive.

We need a Kenyan equivalent funded by Kenyan supporters. When clubs pay salaries, physios, analysts and kit managers, football ceases to be a “hobby.” It becomes employment. A boy in Vihiga can say, “I want to be a left-back for Kakamega Homeboyz,” and know there is a pathway. Right now, the pathway ends at the chief’s field.

More jobs mean more PAYE. More matchdays mean more income for vendors, boda operators and small businesses. The diagnosis is clear: we export our energy and import our identity.

We will spend Sh5,000 to watch Arsenal in a pub, but will not spend Sh200 to watch Gor Mahia at Kasarani. We will mourn when a foreign team loses, but shrug when our local league is suspended for lack of funds. Television and sensationalism have reconditioned our minds to venerate what is distant.

I am not arguing for the abandonment of Arsenal. Affection is not the issue. Misallocation of affection is. The UK converted affection into infrastructure. We can do the same. But only if we accept that the energy, we expend on Sundays belongs, first, to our own fields.

So, the next time Nairobi erupts for Arsenal, ask yourself: when did we last erupt like this for Bandari? For Shabana? For Nzoia Sugar? Because the day Kenyans purchase the KPL rights the way we purchase EPL rights, that is the day we will have fields with grass, balls that are not flat and academies in every county. That is the day a boy will not have to break his heart – or his life – over a team that does not know his name.

The energy exists. We must simply spend it at home.