Image by CAF
The Confederation of African Football (CAF) has named Media Experts Limited (MEL) and Media Business Solutions (UK) Ltd (MBS) as the exclusive free-to-air broadcast rights holders for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations across sub-Saharan Africa, completing its broadcast deals in the region for the first AFCON to be staged by three countries. The two agencies will build a network of national and regional broadcasters that CAF says will reach more than 500 million households in at least 40 countries.
The appointment follows a competitive tender CAF opened in August for free-to-air and pay-TV rights across the region. It sits alongside the pay-TV agreement announced earlier this month, under which Canal+ took English, French and Portuguese-language rights in sub-Saharan Africa.
Coverage begins with the ongoing qualifiers
Free-to-air carriage will be secured in all three hosts, Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, and in the continent’s largest football markets, including Nigeria and South Africa. CAF also listed Ghana, DR Congo, Senegal, Angola and Ethiopia among the territories covered. Broadcast partners in each country will be announced in the coming months. The package also covers the 2026 Futsal Africa Cup of Nations, the 2026 Africa Beach Soccer Cup of Nations, and the 2027 U-20 and U-17 Africa Cups of Nations.
AFCON PAMOJA 2027 runs from 19 June to 17 July 2027 and will be the First edition held in East Africa since Ethiopia hosted in 1976.CAF President Patrice Motsepe said nearly two billion people watched the 2023 edition in Côte d’Ivoire, and that the 2025 tournament in Morocco generated 3.6 billion viewers worldwide, rising to six billion when digital views across social platforms are included. CAF’s own tender documents in August put Morocco’s cumulative TV audience at more than 3.2 billion. Preliminary research released by CAF earlier this year showed a 61 per cent increase in viewership across Europe, Asia and South America.
Sponsors and Viewers
Kunle Falodun, chief executive of Media Experts Limited, pitched the deal as much to sponsors as to viewers. “Free-to-air television is where Africa watches its biggest moments together, and AFCON is the biggest football moment we have,” he said. “For brands and corporate sponsors, it is an opportunity to stand alongside Africa’s most-watched national-team competition with the reach and trust that only free-to-air delivers.”
MBS has handled AFCON distribution before. “We distributed AFCON 2023 in Côte d’Ivoire and saw first-hand what happens when the tournament reaches every home: streets go quiet, living rooms fill up, and whole nations watch together,” said Richard Dimosi Diasolwa, the company’s chief executive. MEL already holds CAF’s sub-Saharan free-to-air mandate for the 2026 Women’s Africa Cup of Nations in Morocco, so the 2027 deal extends an existing relationship rather than opening a new one.
Splitting the region between Canal+ on pay-TV and a single agency pairing on free-to-air gives CAF two separate revenue lines from the same territory without sacrificing reach. In most of sub-Saharan Africa, subscription television remains out of reach for a large share of households. The GeoPoll Africa Football Survey 2026 found free-to-air was the leading way to watch live matches in Nigeria, cited by 64 per cent of respondents. CAF’s sponsors, led by title partner TotalEnergies, terrestrial coverage is what turns the tournament audience into a mass-market one.
The commercial work now shifts to MEL and MBS. Under the agency model, they must place the rights with national broadcasters, many of them state-owned and operating on tight budgets, before the opening match. The 500 million household figure is CAF’s coverage target rather than a measured audience, and the country-by-country broadcaster announcements will show how much of it is secured. CAF has a separate tender running for global commercial rights to the 2028, 2032 and 2036 editions, as AFCON potentially moves to a four-year cycle.
More on AFCON
