Despite previously being outfoxed for the acquisition of Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) tournament rights by Togolese broadcaster New World TV, and then losing the race for sublicensing rights to the SABC, MultiChoice Group has announced that its SuperSport subsidiary has now secured broadcasting rights that will see all 52 games broadcast through its DStv and GOtv platforms across Africa.

“MultiChoice reached a commercially viable agreement with rightsholders New World TV to broadcast the 34th edition of Africa’s premier men’s football competition taking place in the Ivory Coast,” said SuperSport CEO Rendani Ramovha in statement late on Wednesday evening.

The turn of events follows a 4 January statement by MultiChoice in which the pay-television operator announced that “SuperSport will not be broadcasting the Africa Cup of Nations” tournament. Two days later, the SABC announced that it had acquired the rights to broadcast the tournament from New World TV. But who is New World TV, and how did it manage to secure Afcon’s main broadcasting rights ahead of the deep-pocketed MultiChoice?

New World TV is the new kid on the block in African broadcasting. The company was registered with the Togolese business registry, the Centre de Formalités des Entreprises (CFE), in 2015 with broadcasting operations commencing in 2016. Even so, its acquisition of the main rights to Africa’s biggest soccer spectacle was not the first time that the relative newcomer acquired the sporting rights to a major soccer tournament.

The broadcaster’s first foray into the spotlight came in July 2021 when Fifa announced that it would be the footballing body’s exclusive pay-TV partner in 19 French-speaking sub-Saharan African nations for the 2022 Men’s World Cup in Qatar and the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand.

New World TV

Like the World Cup deal, New World TV’s Afcon agreement with the Confederation for African Football is a multiyear, multi-tournament deal which also includes the Afcon 2025 qualifiers, the 2024 Africa Nations Championship, the 2024 CAF champions league, the 2024 CAF Africa Women Cup of Nations, the 2024 CAF Women’s Champion’s League and the 2024 CAF Super Cup.

According to an article by The Africa Report, a French publication, the company is led by lawyer and former Banque Populaire pour l’Epargne et le Crédit counsel Nimonka Kolani.

The company uses SKA Teleco as its technical partner, and SKA MD Marc Adissou, a telecommunications engineer, is New World TV’s promoter. “At the heart of this strategy is a team based in Paris, on Avenue de la Grande Armée, headed by lawyer Louis Biyao, who specialises in intellectual property law,” it said.

Read: SABC one-ups SuperSport for Afcon 2023 rights

“By securing the rights to [Afcon] 2023 under the leadership of Dr Patrice Motsepe, SuperSport and New World TV prove that nothing is more important than the happiness of Africans who wish to follow the exploits of their favourite team during the biggest football competition in Africa,” said Kolani in the statement issued by MultiChoice. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media

AI-generated summary of this article

The article discusses how New World TV, a Togolese broadcaster, acquired the rights to broadcast the 2023 African Cup of Nations (Afcon) tournament.
It also explains how the SABC secured the rights from New World TV to air all 52 games of Afcon 2023 in South Africa.
It contrasts this deal with the previous disputes between the SABC and MultiChoice over sports broadcasting rights.