Kenyan online sports betting firm Sportpesa canceled 600M shillings ($5.8M) in "direct annual sponsorship for the country’s main football league and other sports" after the Kenyan government "hiked taxes for such firms by more than four times," according to Duncan Miriri of REUTERS. The government increased the tax rate on gross profits for sports betting firms, lotteries and casinos to 35% last year, from 7.5%, to "create a fund for sports, culture and the arts." Sportpesa CEO Ronald Karauri said that it was "left with no choice but to cut costs in order to survive." Karauri said, "We had really committed ourselves to sports in the country so it is a very huge burden for us as a cost." Football club Gor Mahia Chair Ambrose Rachier said that the club "might be forced to pull out" of this year’s Confederation Champions League Cup, a regional competition, due to a "lack of funds." The team was getting 60M shillings ($580,000) a year from Sportpesa. The situation "was the same at the Kenya Rugby Union," which is losing 120M shillings ($1.16M) a year, which was used to prepare squads for the int'l rugby sevens series. KRU Chair Richard Omwela said, "It is a total shutdown. Unless the government steps in and says we will underwrite that, what we possibly will do is tell our suppliers and partners that we can’t meet our obligations" (REUTERS, 1/3).
