Are you living in Nigeria? Getting to set to watch the Africa’s biggest sporting event, 2013 Africa Cup of Nations? Well, maybe this is the time to start making alternative arrangements for the competition which gets underway in South Africa from the 19th of January, 2013, as the Broadcasting Organisation of Nigeria (BON) says there seems to be an attempt by owners of the media rights LC2 not to back down from the 8 million euros ($11 million) it is demanding for rights.
The Chairman of BON Abubakar Jijiwa in a chat with media says the organisation is doing everything humanly possible to ensure the logjam is resolved for Nigerians to watch the Super Eagles live. According to Jijiwa, “We have been talking (with CAF representatives) since October last year and have made efforts at reaching a conclusive solution as regards the matter. We have looked at our market and made an offer of $1.2 million to JCM-African Sports Consulting in a letter dated November 1st, 2012 which they rejected.
Jijiwa explained further that LC2 had in a letter mandated BON to negotiate with CFOOT Limited. According to the BON Chairman, the umbrella of media organizations initially made an offer of 1.2 million euros ($1.6 million) for all 32 games in the tournament which was initially rejected. Jigiwa also added that another offer of 1.5 million euros ($2 million) was also rejected by CFOOT Limited.
The BON Chairman says a staggered broadcast may be the only option now. “So what we are suggesting to them now is that they should give us selected matches involving Nigeria including the opening ceremony and the closing ceremony of the 2013 AFCON, and the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final matches of the competition at $300, 000.
“So we have only a week to market this sum of money since the tournament is just about days away. We don’t have the luxury of time to go on advertisement drive and the global melt down has also affected most of these industries now and they are cutting all their expenses including advertisement of their products and services,” Jijiwa disclosed.
In the weeks leading up to the tournament, broadcast rights owner LC2 had sought to clarify issues involving broadcast rights for the 2012 AFCON. According to the French media company in a press statement, “these rights are owned by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and have been granted through a license (to) LC2 Media – AFNEX.”
Also, LC2 insists it has “exclusivity, for Television and Radio broadcasting via Terrestrial TV and satellite by free TV in every language and especially on Nigerian territory.”
Last year, CAF unveiled TV figures of the Orange Africa Cup of Nations 2012 that was co-hosted in Gabon – Equatorial Guinea. The figures showed an estimated record of 6.6 Billion cumulative TV viewers has followed the most prestigious African Sport event with 87072 hours of TV exposure, adding 59965 hours of TV to the figure that was reached in Angola 2010.
“We are quite confident that we will break new records for the coming edition in South Africa next year” CAF Marketing & TV director, Amr Shaheen said.
The Orange Africa Cup of Nations is Africa’s premier national team football competition. The 32-match tournament is organised every even year in January/February. This year’s event will be staged in South Africa from the 19th of January 2013 to the 10th of February.
