With less than a week to go before the opening ceremony, the channels and platforms that have acquired the broadcasting rights for the 2022 FIFA World Cup from New World TV are stepping up their announcements to make it official and publicize their situation.
It should be noted that New World TV acquired the pay-TV and free-to-air rights from FIFA in July 2021.
The pay-TV rights will be reserved for Newworld Sport channels, while the free-to-air rights have been resold to "free" channels, i.e., those that broadcast terrestrially, whether analog or digital.
Channels with "free" rights will thus be able to broadcast live and exclusively the 28 best matches in their national territory. The matches will be the same in all French-speaking African countries and will include, in particular, all the group stage matches of the qualified sub-Saharan African teams (Senegal, Ghana, Cameroon) as well as France's three matches.
In Côte d'Ivoire, NCI (La nouvelle Chaine ivoirienne) was the first to announce in July that it had acquired these rights. The channel has since been regularly communicating its progress in terms of editorial content and public communication.
In Senegal, it has also been known for several months that RTS will broadcast the 28 matches included in this offer for free-to-air channels. At the end of October, RTS1 launched a program called "En route pour le Qatar" (On the way to Qatar) to prepare the public for this global event.
In Cameroon, just a few days ago, it was officially confirmed that CRTV, the public channel, had acquired the free-to-air broadcasting rights for the 2022 World Cup.
This announcement may seem late, but the information will quickly reach a wide audience, as Cameroon has qualified and will face one of the favorites of this edition in the group stage: Brazil, with the highlight being BRAZIL-CAMEROON, which will be the last match of the first round and will be broadcast on December 2.
In Ghana, another sub-Saharan African country that has qualified, the SUPERSPORT channel will broadcast all 64 matches of the 2022 World Cup, as well as replays, reports on the teams' lives, magazines, and more, on eight HD channels dedicated to the event.
ORTB has just confirmed its status as the official broadcaster in Benin. ORTB will be broadcast in analog on national terrestrial frequencies, but also on the Canal+ HD package for those who have a CANAL+ subscription that includes ORTB, and on DTT. The World Cup will also be broadcast on Radio Benin.
In Burkina Faso, the national public channel RTB will also broadcast the World Cup under the same conditions, while in Congo it will be Télé Congo and in the DRC it will be the public channel RTNC.
Among the major countries of West and Central Africa, only Mali has yet to make any official announcement.