FA MISSES OUT ON E500 000 CAF TV DEAL

MBABANE – The FA has lost out on the lucrative television rights deal for the 2017 AFCON qualifiers this weekend.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) signed a multi-million deal with France based company SportFive for all the organisation’s tournaments.

The company then sells the rights to individual companies, with part of the proceeds from the rights going to the host country. Associations are paid a minimum of E500 000 for their home games if televised live by CAF.
Sihlangu take on Malawi on Sunday in a crunch match for the 2017 AFCON qualifiers in group L where the Harris Madze Bulunga coached side are joint leaders with Zimbabwe.

Sihlangu beat Guinea 2-1 in June with Zimbabwe winning on a similar scoreline away to Malawi.
Pay per view television channel SuperSport has secured rights to broadcast eight of this weekend 2017 AFCON qualifier games and that includes the match between Zimbabwe against Guinea in Malawi. The France based company charged about E5 million to television channels to broadcast the games, and the decision caused a serious uproar as some associations had already sold television rights to certain channels for their home games.

 The South African Broadcast Corporation (SABC) was among those who had problems with the arrangement after having secured rights from the South African Football Association SAFA for all Bafana Bafana games.

Yesterday, FA CEO Frederick Mngomezulu could only confirm that Sihlangu game was not among those to be televised live.
“The centralised TV rights deal gave all the powers to CAF to decide whose game will be televised live. It is no longer in our hands,” he said.

A statement released by the company in Lagos said it had acquired the rights for eight matches including that of Nigeria, Ghana, South Africa, Kenya, Zimbabwe and Zambia in the second phase fixtures.

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