There’s a raging debate regarding the standards of a sporting facility coming up in the lakeside city of Kisumu.
Kisumu is a cradle for great sporting talents and rightfully deserves an international stadium to enhance the city’s standing in the sporting world.
While barbs are traded over the quality and standard of the Jomo Kenyatta International Stadium, Salient Sports Management notes with great admiration that the facility will have 59 washrooms for the convenience of spectators.
Not even Kasarani, whose standard is undoubtedly world class, can talk of that laudable number of washrooms within its vast reaches.
A 2013 survey by a South African marketing agency revealed that lack of washrooms in local stadiums was among the main reasons why fans shunned local stadiums leaving clubs unsupported.
This was particularly a major concern to the womenfolk who do not possess the uncultured traits of relieving themselves inappropriately like a certain clique of the menfolk, the study said
The few facilities that had insufficient washrooms were so poorly maintained that spectators opted to dash back to their homes for relief than risk venturing into the stadium washrooms.
As a result of these ‘washroom conditions’, Fans who desire to quench their thirsts with soft drinks sold within stadiums do so with a lot of caution. This hinders business which ought to thrive in and around sporting facilities.
For designers of the Jomo Kenyatta International Stadium to factor in 59 washrooms in construction plans is truly a game changer and precedent ought to be adopted by other developers.
Fan convenience can transform the largely empty stadiums during local games into full-capacity carnivals.
Therefore, the facility in Kisumu may or may not be ‘world class’ but on the washroom factor it scores bigtime.
