- VAST Ghana Offers Excise-Tax Alternative to Alcohol Sponsorship in Football
VAST Ghana has proposed that football receive a share of excise-tax revenue as an alternative to alcohol-brand sponsorship, intensifying a debate over how Ghana should fund sport while limiting children’s exposure to alcohol marketing.
The proposal follows a renewed call by Ghana Football Association president Kurt Okraku for Parliament to review restrictions that have prevented the association from concluding an alcohol-company sponsorship deal.
Okraku told Parliament’s Select Committee on Sports that Guinness Ghana had expressed interest in investing in the Ghana Premier League, with the proposed agreement valued at more than US$5 million a year. He said the deal fell through after the Food and Drugs Authority declined to approve it.
VAST Ghana, which led a group of civil society organisations opposing a change to the rules, says the financial case for the deal does not settle the question.
Its position is that football needs reliable funding, but that the means of raising it matter when a sponsor’s branding would appear on shirts, stadium boards and broadcasts watched by young people.
“Sponsorship of football is therefore not philanthropy with a logo attached,” the group said, describing sponsorship as a form of advertising. It offered to accompany the GFA to the Finance Ministry to seek a share of excise revenue instead.
The dispute is not simply between football and public health. It exposes a funding problem that has persisted across Ghanaian sport: federations need capital for competitions, facilities and national teams, while the state must decide whether commercial exposure to products with health risks is an acceptable price for that support.
The GFA’s appeal is grounded in the scale of the opportunity it says it has lost. More than US$5 million annually would represent a substantial source of funding for a league and association that need to build commercial income and improve infrastructure.
Okraku has also described broader resource constraints, including the GFA’s account that its national teams have relied on one bus bought in 2008, which has now broken down.
But the legal framework is not a blanket prohibition on alcohol sales or on alcohol companies operating in Ghana. The FDA’s advertising guidelines, issued under Section 148 of the Public Health Act, 2012 (Act 851), prohibit advertisements from associating alcoholic beverages with sporting activity.
They also restrict alcohol advertising linked to activities requiring care and skill, prohibit appeals to people under 18, and require promotional material for sponsored events to be submitted for approval.
That distinction matters. The immediate policy question is whether to change the rules governing alcohol promotion in sport and the FDA’s role in approving it. It is not whether the alcohol industry can trade in Ghana. VAST Ghana argues that the Ghana Sports Fund Act, 2025 (Act 1159), which identifies multiple sources of sports funding, should be implemented consistently with the Public Health Act and the FDA guidelines.
The excise-tax proposal offers a route to separate the source of money from the advertising rights attached to a sponsorship. VAST Ghana cites GH¢1.56 billion in domestic excise revenue for 2025 and argues that sport could receive a share.
That figure covers domestic excise revenue across product categories; it should not be read as alcohol-tax revenue alone, or as money already available to the GFA.
Turning the proposal into a funding stream would require decisions on how much revenue to allocate, which sports and programmes would qualify, and how funds would be distributed and audited.
Excise revenue is part of public revenue, so a dedicated allocation would need to be reconciled with competing budget priorities and the existing Sports Fund framework. The proposal is therefore an invitation to design a mechanism, not evidence that a ready-made funding pool exists.
Its central appeal is that it could preserve a financial contribution from a taxed industry without granting it the same visibility in football.
But earmarking revenue also brings risks: allocations can become unpredictable if collections fluctuate, and a fund can lose public confidence if selection criteria and spending are opaque.
Any arrangement would need clear rules, published accounts and safeguards against political discretion.
VAST Ghana’s case rests partly on the risk that sport can provide a powerful marketing channel to children. The FDA guidelines explicitly restrict alcohol advertising associated with sport and advertising directed at minors. In its statement, VAST argues that a brand’s presence on football shirts, boards and broadcasts makes sponsorship more than a private financial transaction.
The health evidence needs careful presentation. Ghana’s 2023 STEPS report found that 22.6 per cent of adults aged 18 to 69 had consumed alcohol in the preceding 30 days; the share was 30.6 per cent among men and 14.5 per cent among women.
The survey measures adults, so it does not itself substantiate a separate adolescent-consumption figure cited in the civil society statement.
That distinction does not resolve the sponsorship debate, but accurate use of evidence is essential when public-health arguments are being used to shape law.
The challenge for policymakers is to avoid treating the choices as binary. The GFA’s lost deal highlights the commercial value that football believes it can attract. VAST Ghana’s proposal asks whether government can channel part of the public revenue generated by excise taxes into sport while retaining limits on alcohol branding.
Neither position alone answers how much funding football needs or how to ensure it reaches the game effectively.
A workable settlement would require the GFA and government to publish a credible account of football’s funding needs, identify which existing Sports Fund revenue sources are underused, and assess whether a transparent excise allocation is fiscally and legally feasible. It would also need to preserve the FDA’s authority to apply public-health rules consistently.
For the GFA, the opportunity is to turn a lost sponsorship into a broader case for predictable, accountable funding. For government, the test is whether it can support sport without weakening a regulatory framework designed to limit alcohol promotion around activities that attract young audiences.
VAST Ghana’s offer to go to the Finance Ministry now places a concrete alternative before the debate. Whether it can match the scale, certainty and commercial appeal of the proposed Guinness deal remains unresolved. What is clear is that Ghana’s decision will shape not only who pays for football, but also what visibility that money can buy.
