The conference on public television organized during the last DISCOP Abidjan, during which the sensitive subject of sports rights was discussed, provided an opportunity to reignite a controversy that is still far from over.
Two years ago, Lagardère Sports was challenged by numerous channels that considered the prices offered to broadcast the 2017 Africa Cup of Nations matches to be prohibitive. Negotiations to obtain a more acceptable price continued until a few hours before the opening match.
Since the new call for tenders launched by CAF last April, it is now the UAR that is marketing the sports rights for the 2019 AFCON to free-to-air channels. However, this organization, which represents African public channels and a few private channels, is also the subject of fierce criticism.
Aboubacry Ba, CEO of CIS Médias, is still furious: "The African Broadcasting Union (UAR) has set even higher prices than in previous editions. These have risen from 1.2 million CFA francs to 1.5 million CFA francs."
The official reason for this increase is that the competition now has 24 teams instead of 16 and the number of matches is increasing proportionally.
However, for Aboubacry BA, this situation "is the result of a poor policy on the redistribution of rights. While the Confederation of African Football (CAF) is simply asking the UAR to pay it $22 million (approximately €19.5 million) for the rights to the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, the UAR wanted to grant exclusive rights to a single channel per country. I don't understand why the UAR is organizing this race for exclusivity by allowing only one body to have rights that it will not be able to monetize anyway because of their high cost
."
Read also: Interview with Aboubacry Ba, CEO of CIS Médias
Will Aboubacry Ba's outburst have the desired effect?
There are still about 20 days to go before the competition begins, 20 days in which Aboubacry Ba's reasonable proposal may ultimately prevail: examples of competitions being shared between free-to-air television channels are commonplace, particularly when there are a large number of matches, some of which are played at the same time.
Read also: Sports rights in French-speaking Africa