NTA to show all AFCON games live after deal with AfroSports TV

The forthcoming African Cup of Nations (AFCON) will be shown live on the Nigerian Television Authority (NTA), the station announced on Wednesday.

The federal government-owned broadcaster said it had reached an agreement with AfroSports TV, a Free-To-Air (FTA) sports channel that covers the continent, to air all 52 games of the tournament in Ivory Coast.

“NTA signs a memorandum of understanding with Afro Sports TV for transmission of 52 games of African Cup of Nations in Cote d’Ivoire,” the station posted on X.

This comes after MultiChoice, the owner of DStv and GOtv, revealed that it had failed to secure the broadcasting rights for the AFCON, which kicks off on January 13.

The media giant said its SuperSport channel would not be able to show the competition, which was won by a Togolese audio-visual group called New World TV.

New World TV had bagged the rights to air all 13 CAF’s competitions for the sub-Saharan African market for two years, from 2023 to 2025. This includes the current AFCON and the next one.

However, there were doubts about the accessibility of New World TV, which mainly operates in French-speaking African countries.

StarTimes, another pay-TV service, said it had solved this problem by striking a sublicensing deal with New World and would broadcast the competition on its sports channels.

The 34th edition of the AFCON will run from January 13 to February 11 in Ivory Coast.

Nigeria’s Super Eagles are in Group A with Ivory Coast, Equatorial Guinea and Guinea-Bissau.

They will play their first game against Equatorial Guinea on January 14, then face Ivory Coast on January 18 and wrap up the group stage with the Guinea-Bissau match.

The Eagles are coming from a one-week training camp in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates (UAE), where they beat Al Gharaib, a local club, 12-0 and lost 2-0 to Guinea.

They will head to Ivory Coast on Wednesday.