The announcement of Bank of America as a sponsor of the Great Ethiopian Run arrives at a historic moment, the twenty fifth anniversary of the event. This milestone is significant not only for its longevity but also for what it represents in terms of vision, discipline, and excellence within Ethiopian sport. For the wider sporting community, this partnership carries a message with profound implications.
A Vision Twenty-Five Years in the Making
As someone who involved in the early groundwork that helped establish the Great Ethiopian Run, I have seen the event grow from an ambitious idea into one of Africa’s leading mass participation road races. From the beginning, the Great Ethiopian Run was built with a clear intention. It was not created as a one-day event, but as a sustainable business venture capable of influencing national culture and turning running into a way of life for millions.
Haile Gebrselassie provided an inspirational foundation, elevating the pride of the country on international stages and helping to define running as part of our identity. Richard Nerurkar brought professionalism and an unwavering work ethic that shaped the organization. His discipline and strategic clarity influenced all of us who worked there. Dagmawit Amare carried the event into institutional maturity by offering stability, operational precision, and strong leadership. These individuals created more than an event. They created a national institution that continues to inspire and unite the country.
Meaning Making and Sponsorship
Society creates meaning of activities, objects, and actions through practice, norms, and tradition. Yet the meaning that society assigns does not always reflect the true nature of a thing. As the saying goes, the world is not what it is, but what you are. In the same way, the concept of sponsorship is ill-defined and widely misunderstood in our society. Many people describe sponsorship as a gift, philanthropy, or a donation. In reality, these acts fall under corporate social responsibility. They are not sponsorship.
True sponsorship is an investment made with the expectation of measurable return. Sponsorship is, at its core, a business transaction. Whether the investment is in cash or in kind, it is made in an event (e.g., Great Ethiopian Run), individual (e.g., Haile and Adidas), or any other property (e.g., a league, a national team, a global event, a venue) with the expectation of receiving marketing objectives in return (e.g., exposure, educating, image building, sales). When a sponsor provides money, products, or services, the intention is to reach the property audience, whether fans, participants, or customers, and to advance the sponsors’ business objectives.
Sponsorship typically follows a four-stage communication and marketing process. The first stage is awareness or exposure, which focuses on making the audience aware that the sponsor or its brand exists. The second stage is knowledge or education, where audiences learn about the sponsors’ product, service, or brand. The third stage is image building or brand enhancement, where the partnership helps shape or improve the audiences’ perception of the sponsor. The final stage is reciprocity or sales, where the ultimate goal is to drive consumer action, loyalty, and purchasing behavior. For any sponsor, the bottom line is sales, and each stage along this continuum is designed to move toward that outcome. Different sponsors enter partnerships seeking different outcomes along this continuum. For example, when Rakuten sponsors the US basketball team Golden State Warriors, the primary objective is to create brand awareness Rakuten and to enter the American market.
And, people may go to school to learn, and they may read books, articles, and scholarly work to understand the subject matter of sponsorship or any other matter. But in my view, Ethiopian sport organizations do not need to search far for examples of sponsorship excellence. The textbook is already in front of them. All they need to do is study what the Great Ethiopian Run has been doing for twenty-five years.
The Significance of Bank of America Partnership
There is a well understood concept in sponsorship known as the reverse image effect. When an established global brand aligns itself with a property, the credibility and strength of the sponsor are transferred to the property in a meaningful way. The involvement of Bank of America offers exactly that type of elevation to the Great Ethiopian Run. This partnership immediately enhances the brand value of the event, strengthens its credibility, and creates opportunities for future commercial growth.
The implications go far beyond the Great Ethiopian Run itself. This partnership signals to the entire Ethiopian sporting sector that global brands are ready to invest when an organization demonstrates professionalism, structure, and clear commercial value. It is an invitation for every sport in the country, including football, basketball, volleyball, athletics, and others, to ask what they need to change in order to attract partnerships of this scale.
Football and the Urgent Need for Reform
For almost two years, two years back, I led and authored a deep and comprehensive study commissioned by the Ethiopian Premier League to examine the multi-dimensional development of football in the country. The study is presented in a three-hundred-and-seventy-page document that draws on the experiences of more than one hundred and forty countries. It incorporates interviews with nearly ninety individuals from fifteen different but direct stakeholder of Ethiopian football (e.g., the federation leaders, coaches, players, agents, journalists, sport professors, etc.). It includes an analysis of national, continental, and FIFA’s policy frameworks and is supported by more than two hundred scholarly sources.
The findings are clear and consistent. Football in Ethiopia is financially unsustainable under its current model. Most Premier League clubs rely entirely on local government budgets. The most conservative estimate shows that clubs spend around seventy-five million birr every year, and about seventy five percent of that amount goes directly to salaries, and rest to transport, accommodation. Very little remains for infrastructure, development, marketing, or long-term growth. This is not a sustainable way to build a sport industry. It is similar to pouring water on sand.
A Homegrown Solution Based on Community Ownership
The most important solution that emerged from the study is a homegrown community based ownership model. This model reflects what Ethiopian sport policy already states, that the role of the government is to facilitate development and that the community should own the clubs.
Under the commissioned study’s recommendation, club ownership would be divided among registered fans, the public, and the government in a structure of thirty percent, forty percent, and thirty percent, suggested based on empirical data. The term public is not abstract. It includes local business owners, residents of the area who are not necessarily registered fans, owners of small hotels or motels, teachers, banks, universities, beer factories, and members of the diaspora. In the long term it can also include responsible foreign investors. This model promotes accountability and makes it possible for qualified sport business managers to lead the clubs. If they do not perform, the community can replace them without depending on political structures or government budgets. This approach opens the door for bright sport managers, investment, commercial growth, and genuine development. It is aligned with global best practices and, more importantly, it is built on the cultural and economic realities of Ethiopia.
The Textbook Is Already Here
Sport organizations in Ethiopia do not need to travel abroad or search for complex concepts to understand how to build a successful sporting property. The example is already here at home. The Great Ethiopian Run shows, in practice, what professionalism, clear governance, community engagement, and commercial discipline can achieve over time. It has done what many clubs and federations are still struggling to do. It has turned a local idea into a national institution and an attractive global partner.
The Great Ethiopian Run operates in the same economic and political environment as other Ethiopian sport organizations. It faces the same infrastructure constraints and the same market realities. Yet its choices have been different. It has treated sport as a business, sponsorship as an investment, and the public as a community of participants and partners rather than as passive observers. In doing so, it has applied in real life the very principles that many try to learn from books and international case studies.
The event has become a model of sponsorship excellence by understanding the continuum from awareness and knowledge to image building and, ultimately, to reciprocity and sales. It has delivered value to sponsors, not as charity or philanthropy, but as a return on investment. The recent partnership with Bank of America is not a coincidence. It is a logical outcome of two and a half decades of credible delivery, professional management, and consistent brand building.
For federations, leagues, and clubs that still depend almost entirely on government budgets, the lesson is simple and powerful. Instead of pouring resources into structures that do not generate long term value, they can study how the Great Ethiopian Run plans, negotiates, delivers, and measures its partnerships. It is difficult to imagine a clearer lesson for the rest of Ethiopian sport. The textbook is not in a foreign capital. It is on the streets of Addis Ababa every year when tens of thousands of people take part in the Great Ethiopian Run.
A Moment for Reflection and Celebration
As the Great Ethiopian Run celebrates its twenty fifth year, it also delivers a national lesson. When a sporting organization is managed with integrity, discipline, and commercial vision, the world takes notice. The partnership with Bank of America is evidence of that. It is more than a sponsorship agreement. It is a validation of two decades of work and a roadmap for the future of Ethiopian sport.
So, what is the implication of all of this? Back in 2006, while studying Sport Management at in England (an opportunity that I got through the Great Ethiopian Run connections), I wrote an article titled “Everyone Is a Winner in the Great Ethiopian Run.” Even then, it was clear to me that the Great Ethiopian Run was far more than a road race. Its sporting, health, societal, historical, political, economic, and cultural significance is profound. The Great Ethiopian Run has become a national institution, one that unites people, inspires generations, stimulates the economy, elevates our global image, and reinforces running as part of our cultural identity. Its influence is woven into the fabric of modern Ethiopian life. For this reason, the country must continue to treasure, celebrate, and honor the leaders who envisioned it, built it, protected it, and elevated it to its present level. Their work is not ordinary. It is nation building.
A Well-Deserved Congratulations
I want to express my deepest appreciation to the visionary living legend Haile Gebrselassie. His accomplishments on the track and on the road lifted our flag to the highest stages and made our national anthem echo through some of the world’s greatest arenas. Yet his legacy extends far beyond medals and victories. He transformed running into a national lifestyle, a cultural identity, and a unifying force for Ethiopia. His influence helped lay the foundation for what the Great Ethiopian Run has become.
I am fortunate to have been among a handful of people involved in the earliest years of establishing the Great Ethiopian Run. Building a foundation is important, but sustaining it for twenty-five years, growing it, and elevating it to where it stands today requires vision, discipline, and relentless dedication. What the Great Ethiopian Run has achieved did not happen by chance. It is the result of leadership and commitment at the highest level. For this reason, I extend my sincere admiration and congratulations to Richard Nerurkar. His leadership and strategic vision have guided the event through its most formative stages. His belief in the potential of Ethiopian running and his unyielding work ethic shaped the Great Ethiopian Run into one of the most respected and influential sporting events on the African continent.
I thank Dagmawit Amare for guiding and sustaining the organization during its years of significant growth. And I welcome Bank of America for placing trust in this remarkable event. This partnership marks the beginning of a new chapter. May the rest of our sporting institutions look inward, learn from this example, and take decisive steps toward a more sustainable and prosperous future for Ethiopian sport.
Gashaw Abeza (PhD) is an Associate Professor of Sport Business Management at Towson University (Maryland, USA). He was involved in the early foundation years of the Great Ethiopian Run, an experience that later inspired him to establish the Grand African Run in the United States, now in its seventh year. Gashaw is the author of the widely circulated book Sport Sponsorship Insights. He advises sport organizations around the world on sport business strategy and teaches senior level courses on sponsorship and sport marketing. He also supervises doctoral students at Munich Business School (Germany) on topics related to sport business.
Contributed by Gashaw Zergaw Abeza (PhD)
