Motsepe’s magic touch just what African football needed
The winds of change that started blowing through the corridors of power at the Confederation of African Football’s (Caf’s) Cairo headquarters when businessman Patrice Motsepe ascended to the presidency in 2021 are starting to bear fruit. The organisation’s coffers are in their healthiest state ever.
Sponsorship has increased substantially, growing from seven sponsors at the 2021 Afcon in Cameroon to 17 global and national partners at the 2023 edition which got under way yesterday in Abidjan.
The televisual reach of the tournament has expanded to 45 European territories as well as the Caribbean and South America. Caf is creaming it. The coffers are bulging with an expectation of a net profit of no less than 10 times the $5m made in Cameroon.
How Motsepe has changed the game is something to salute. The confederation has made no bones about the fact that it wants free-to-air television to be able to obtain rights to flight its tournaments. As it should. In most of the 54 member countries the populace depend on free-toair to enjoy their sport.
For the first time it will get its just rewards, not just from Cape to Cairo the soccer showpiece will be available to a global audience with a viewership north of 600-million. The entry of New World TV into the African football broadcasting space heralds a new era which promises great prosperity for Caf.
But even more importantly, this new entrant on the broadcasting block is the first African media house to obtain exclusive rights to premier African football competitions. These include the prestigious Africa Cup of Nations (for men and women), Afcon 2025 qualifiers, the Champions League, the Confederation Cup, under-17 and under-20 Afcon, and beach Afcon.
For many decades, especially when the confederation was in the grip of Issa Hayatou, TV rights were the domain of companies that obtained them for a pittance. But now the stranglehold of European companies has been broken.
Under previous administrations, the footballcontrolling body on the continent got into bed with broadcasters reluctant to pay top dollar.
New World TV, a Togolese company, announced its arrival on the scene by securing exclusive pay-TV partner rights for the Qatar 2022 Fifa World Cup and 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand in 19 French-speaking Sub-Saharan nations.
For the Caf tournaments bouquet, it paid R1.9bn. That sum, combined with R1.6bn from Canal Plus, puts the organisation in strong financial standing. This is cash that should cascade down to football development, money that must be used to strengthen the sport by improving facilities to the point where the best African talent will be able to stay on the continent and play in properly run and financially rewarding leagues.
Opening the broadcast space for the spectacle is a treat for supporters of the sport. Football is to millions of Africans what cricket is to India and most countries in Asia, the sport of choice.
Football is the universal game of billions yet its African version, in the form of its premier competition, has seldom enjoyed its fair share of the spotlight.
Closer to home, New Word TV sublicensed the rights to the SABC, who celebrated their coup over MultiChoice. Having previously said SuperSport would not show Afcon, the group on Wednesday announced that it had “reached a commercially viable agreement with rightsholders New World TV to broadcast the 34th edition of Africa’s premier men’s football competition”, in a statement attributed to SuperSport CE Rendani Ramovha.
For the first time, Afcon will attract a truly global audience the prestige it deserves. “This demonstrates the expertise acquired over the past two years with the broadcasting rights for the 2022 Fifa World Cup, Uefa football competitions, English FA Cup, Bundesliga, Spanish Cup and Italian Cup,” said New World TV spokesperson Louis Biyao.
A downside to lack of Afcon access previously was manifest in the absence of excitement about what is a mega event, the lack of exposure leading to neither European nor Latin American excitement about an event that is the continental equivalent of the Euro Championship and Copa America.
Instead, especially in the cases of Europe and the English Premiership, Afcon is viewed as an irritation that creates disruption to the cause of clubs chasing to be crowned champions or those bidding to beat the dreaded relegation axe.
It was significant that when Caf publicly opened the bidding for its broadcast rights, Motsepe did not succumb to the temptation of giving the rights to homeboys in South Africa.
He would have fallen into the same trap as his predecessors who plunged the confederation into a controversial $1bn television and marketing rights deal with French entity Lagardere Sports from 2017 to 2028. Lagardere had been part of Caf television production for close to 20 years before Caf scrapped the deal in 2019.