The Travesty of African Football Broadcast Rights

Last week as Zambia succumbed to the might of Ghana's Black Stars to bring the country's world cup dreams to an abrupt halt, there was the distinct possibility that the match, eventually broadcast by Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation, ZNBC, would not be televised due to the high cost of procuring the rights to show the game.

Sportfive, the Paris-based sports marketing agency owns the rights for the Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, having procured them from the Confederation of African Football, CAF. They demanded the sum of US$150,000 for the match, exactly the same amount ZNBC has paid to secure the rights for all 64 World Cup 2014 matches. Due to public pressure, ZNBC struggled but eventually managed to raise the amount.

Earlier in the year, ZNBC had to fork out the not-too-insignificant sum of 1-million Euro or US$1.55m for 32 matches of the Africa Cup of Nations. In the case of Nigeria, LC2, the company appointed by Sportfive to sell the Africa Cup of Nations tournament rights to African countries demanded the sum of 4.5 million Euro (US$6-million) from the west African country. Nigeria subsequently were unable to broadcast the matches on Free-To -Air TV, forcing fans to watch the matches on satellite TV in pubs, homes and improvised viewing centres.

It is clear that the rights being sold to African countries are not being sold at values that make commercial sense but that, given the fanaticism of African football fans for their teams, leaves countries with no choice but to pay whatever is demanded by the rights holders. African countries are being forced to pay

sums that they could never hope to recoup through sales of advertising on their TV platforms. This renders the price of the product way beyond its true market value.

Either the government or companies are arm-twisted into paying these abnormally inflated fees to prevent a public uproar that wouldn't go down well politically.

Until broadcasters stand their ground and refuse to be extorted the daylight robbery of their coffers will continue unabated.