The 2025 Africa Cup of Nations will undoubtedly be the audiovisual and popular event of the year in Africa.
With just a few weeks to go before kick-off and amid a campaign calling for all matches to be broadcast in full—as is the case in English-speaking Africa—launched by a collective of public and private channels in French-speaking Africa, announcements surrounding the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations are multiplying.
The initiative launched by the collective of French-speaking sub-Saharan African channels received enormous coverage, with articles and reports appearing throughout the African press and on the programs of the channels concerned.
Although CAF has not yet officially responded to the collective's request, the list of subscribing channels is growing: the rights granted by NEW WORLD TV to free-to-air channels are not exclusive, meaning that several channels in the same country can broadcast the matches free of charge.
In Cameroon, CRTV, which signed the letter to CAF, will co-broadcast the competition with EQUINOXE TV, its private competitor, which has just announced the signing of its agreement with New World TV.
In Ivory Coast: NCI, which announced in September through its deputy program director Joël-Amos BADI that it would participate in CAN 2025 as a broadcaster, was joined by RTI, and both are co-signatories of the letter to CAF.
Most other public channels in French-speaking sub-Saharan Africa will also broadcast the competition:
- RTS in Senegal,
- ORTB in Benin,
- RTNC in the DRC,
- ORTM in Mali,
- the ORTN in Niger,
- RTB in Burkina Faso
All of these free channels will share broadcasting rights with CANAL+ Afrique, which will broadcast the entire 2025 Africa Cup of Nations (52 matches) in French on pay TV.
Faced with such competition, the difference will come down to the details—as they say in soccer jargon.
The power of communication, the quality of commentators and consultants, and all editorial content outside of match broadcasts (pre-match, debriefs, magazines, interviews, replays, summaries, etc.) will make all the difference. It is also the editorial resources available to broadcasters (particularly in cases where there are several free-to-air broadcasters) that will determine which channel the public chooses to watch.