The heads of RTS (Senegal), RTI and NCI (Ivory Coast), CRTV (Cameroon), RTB (Burkina Faso), ORTM (Mali), ORTN (Niger), RTG (Guinea), and GGT (Gabon) and ONAMA (Chad) have joined forces in a collective to denounce, in a letter addressed to the President of the African Football Confederation, Patrice Motsepe, the conditions for acquiring the broadcasting rights for the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations.
According to the collective, French-language national television stations are being offered access to only 33 matches, while their English-language counterparts, as well as a non-African international pay-TV operator, will have access to all 52 matches in the competition. The signatories believe this situation will be difficult to explain to national authorities and the public.
For the signatories, "the CAN is more than just a sports tournament. It is a continental celebration, a moment of communion, pride, and African unity… This situation is all the more worrying as it does not affect television stations in English- and Portuguese-speaking countries, which suggests that it is designed solely to satisfy the dominant pay-TV operator operating in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa."
In this letter, the signatories denounce the CAF's strategic direction, which risks "depriving a large part of the African population, particularly the most disadvantaged, of the fundamental right to full and free access to their own sporting and cultural heritage."
They are calling on CAF to commit to ensuring that CAN2025 remains a truly popular African event that is fully accessible to all.