Dream Entertainment Limited has taken over the management of the Arnett Gardens Football Club (AGFC). The announcement was made at a press conference on Monday, where Chairman Mark Golding and executive members of AGFC as well as the Group Chairman Kamal Bankay and Group Managing Director Scott Dunn of Dream Entertainment were present.

As of September 1, Dream Entertainment took over the management and operations of the football club.

This collaboration, they say, will usher in a new era for the club, featuring what they describe as innovative initiatives and significant investments designed to enhance the club’s performance and elevate its profile on both local and international stages.

Chairman of the football club Mark Golding explained the decision behind this partnership. He stated that “AGFC is a very important institution and enterprise in the constituency in which I’m Member of Parliament and it means a great deal to the residents of Arnett Gardens, Trench Town, Jones Town and surrounding communities. Importantly for me, I was seeking a commercial partner to guide strategy and manage the club forward, to grow revenues and achieve financial sustainability. This is important because any enterprise needs to achieve that in order to be there for the medium to long term.

“AGFC was founded in 1977 and has been a leading brand in football, a much-loved, much-supported club, not only in the communities where it’s based but the wider Jamaica, the diaspora and beyond. We were very happy to meet some like minded people, the principals of Dream Entertainment, who are relatively young and have already established themselves in the field of entertainment as being innovators and very capable executors of successful entertainment activities. They will provide strategic and management oversight, working with the existing management team at the Arnett Gardens Football Club,” Golding continued.

The group says this partnership is set to be beneficial for all parties involved, and facilitate improvements in, not only the operation of the Arnett Gardens Football Club, but football in Jamaica as a whole.

Scott Dunn, group managing director of Dream Entertainment, shares this sentiment, saying, “ Sports, by far, is the biggest consumed part of entertainment. There’s no music festival, no carnivals, globally that are on the level of large sporting events. So, sports is really at the top of the pyramid when you look at entertainment.”

Dunn says this deal is not a “behind the scenes business deal”, but rather a primary part of the company’s business and a primary part of its focus.

“We want to build the community and build the football club, one can’t happen without the other,” he said. “So it’s not just about going and making Arnett a winning team —and that’s a must! Because losing ah nuh our thing. So we’re going there to win, but we’re going there to do other things because winning is more than just trophies and money. The win is building the community stronger and making Arnett the apple of everybody’s eye.”

While football is a staple in Jamaican communities, the Dream team says that more can be done to build and commercialise the sport.

“My belief right now is that professional football in Jamaica is too community-focused,” Dunn said. “In terms of a spectator standpoint it should be much wider. Arnett Gardens is an iconic community, and if we look at it, Trench Town is a bigger brand than Kingston from a tourism perspective. How I view us moving forward in Arnett is, wherever Jamaican people live in the world, and wherever Caribbean people live, ultimately, Arnett Gardens is going to be their football club. We will make Arnett as big of a brand as any other coming out of Jamaica, just like Dream, Sandals, Grace, and others.”