
Wed
21st May
2008

Mobile entertainment group launch ‘Global Soccer Star’ in Tanzania to discover football talent and offer the best player a professional football scholarship in Europe
London and Dar Es Salaam, 21st May 2008: Vodacom Tanzania, in association with Motorola, are sponsoring a ROK initiative entitled Global Soccer Star (GSS), designed to find real football talent in Africa, starting in Tanzania in June 2008.
GSS Tanzania 2008, will be implemented nationwide in collaboration with the Tanzania Football Federation.
Ephraim Mafuru, Vodacom’s Tanzania Head of Sponsorship and Communication, said “the initiative will develop footballing talent in the country”; and has called upon the young of Tanzania to take part in the excellent initiative.
“Under the rules of the competition, aspiring footballers in Tanzania will be invited to text their registration requests to the shortcode 15500. They will then receive an SMS message, for free, containing a link to a football skills training WAP site, and a unique PIN code that will be required to gain entry to a regional assessment day. The website www.globalsoccerstar.com and the WAP site provide further information on how they can progress through the programme to win the scholarship to GSS academy in Marbella, Spain” said Mafuru
GSS will host Regional Assessment Days in June 2008 for up to 25,000 players aged between 16 and 22 years old, in cities across Tanzania, including Arusha, Mwanza, Mbeya, Dar es Salam and Zanzibar.
Mwanza Centre will include Mwanza, Kigoma, Kagera, Shinyanga, Tabora and Mara. Arusha centre will include Arusha, Kilimanjaro, Manyara, Tanga and Singida. Mbeya centre will include Mbeya, Rukwa, Ruvuma and Iringa. Zanzibar centre will include Pemba and Unguja and Dar es Salaam centre will include Dar es Salaam, Morogoro, Dodoma, Mtwara and Lindi.
The best 30 players selected by the GSS Professional Assessment Team will then assemble in Dar es Salam for a 5-weekend-long Football Camp where the players will be put through their paces - culminating in a match against a team nominated by the Tanzanian Football Federation.
“Motorola, is very proud to be part of this initiative by preloading Global Soccer Star content - sequential training images in local Swahili - onto 1GB memory cards, placed free in the box, with the superb Motorola W230 handset,“ said Joanne Doyle, Motorola Head of Marketing, East & Central Africa.
“Motorola are very excited to be participating in this extraordinary search for one very talented young soccer player and, furthermore, to be able to extend professional soccer training content to the whole country,” added Doyle.
Motorola, in collaboration with Vodacom Tanzania, will sell handsets through various Vodacom distribution channels and one lucky winner will receive a free ticket to attend a regional soccer match where the Vodacom Tanzania Premier League will play against the Vodacom Soccer Academy All Star XI.
GSS have partnered with the Tanzania Broadcasting Company (TBC 1) to produce a 13 week TV show highlighting the search for the new soccer star – with members of the public voting throughout the process to select the overall winner.
The winner of GSS Tanzania 2008 will be awarded a football scholarship at the GSS Academy in Marbella, Spain.
Laurence Alexander, CEO of ROK, commented “We are delighted to be launching this initiative to find a new soccer star in Africa. Players from Africa have graced the Premiership in UK as well as European soccer leagues and we are excited to be searching for the next Didier Drogba.”
ROK Entertainment Group Inc., founded in 2004, is a global mobile entertainment group.
With approximately 200 staff worldwide, ROK has filed more than 40 international patents for its suite of innovative mobile technologies.
With 3 billion mobile handsets in use worldwide, the mobile entertainment industry is a multi-billion dollar business.
ROK TV enables the streaming of live and on-demand TV to mobile phones over mass-market 2.5G, as well as over 3G and Wi-Fi.
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The information contained in this new release, other than historical information, consists of forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those described in these statements. Forward-looking statements regarding the timing of developing, testing and releasing existing and new products, of marketing and selling them, of deriving revenues and profits from them, as well as the effects of those revenues and profits on the Group's margins and financial position, are uncertain because many of the factors affecting the timing of those items are beyond the Group's control.