Canal+ Takes Sole Control of European Club Football in Sub-Saharan Africa Until 2031
Image by Kadir Caliskan
Canal+ has acquired exclusive rights, in all languages, to every UEFA men's club competition across more than 40 sub-Saharan African countries from mid-2027 until 2031, consolidating a set of rights that until now had been split by language between rival broadcasters.
The four-season agreement, covers the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, along with the Youth League and the Super Cup. It was brokered by UC3, the commercial joint venture between UEFA and the European Football Clubs body, with Relevent Football Partners acting as UEFA's sales agency for the club competitions through 2033. Financial terms were not disclosed.
The distribution splits by language. In English-and Portuguese-speaking markets, SuperSport - which Canal+ acquired with MultiChoice, retains the exclusive coverage it already held. In francophone Africa, Canal+ Sport regains full Champions League coverage and takes exclusive French-language rights to the Europa League and Conference League for the first time. Those French-language rights had belonged to Togo-based New World TV, which is shut out of the new cycle. Canal+ saw off a crowded field to get there, with some markets drawing more than 20 offers.
Africa is the latest in a run of UEFA cycles Canal+ has won from UC3. The group has already secured club competition rights for the same 2027–31 period in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland and Austria. Canal+ CEO Maxime Saada called the African acquisition "a perfect illustration" of what he described as "the most attractive" sports line-up across sub-Saharan Africa.
Canal+ led its announcement with players rather than clubs, naming Victor Osimhen, Ademola Lookman, Serhou Guirassy, Amad Diallo, Bryan Mbeumo, Antoine Semenyo, Nicolas Jackson, Achraf Hakimi and Michael Olise before it reached Kylian Mbappé, Erling Haaland and Lamine Yamal. The pitch to African subscribers is European football sold as African football.
Before Canal+ took control of Multichoice in September 2025, UEFA club football in the region was sold in pieces - SuperSport in the anglophone and lusophone markets, Canal+ and New World TV fighting over francophone West and Central Africa. Owning both sides of that split lets Canal+ bid once for the whole continent and price it as one asset. UC3 gets a simpler negotiation. The only licensed challenger of any scale in French-speaking Africa loses the property it built its position on.
Image by Canal+
Canal+'s half-year results in July reported subscriber acquisition across MultiChoice markets up 40% year on year, with June the strongest month for new sign-ups in South Africa in a decade, yet the group also conceded that the subscriber portfolio in MultiChoice countries was broadly flat against the first half of 2025 - and it has stopped publishing DStv's country-level numbers altogether. Customers walked away from DStv over price, not programming. Canal+ has now bought the strongest pricing instrument available in African pay-TV on the assumption that people who churned out over cost will come back because there is nowhere else to watch Osimhen or Hakimi.
The competition that should concern Canal+ does not turn up at UEFA auctions. Piracy and free social platforms already absorb a large share of African football viewing, and MultiChoice has been losing subscribers in markets like Kenya to exactly that pressure. Four years of hard exclusivity across 40 countries raises the payoff for every unlicensed stream on the continent. Canal+ has secured the rights and now the harder work is convincing 40 markets to pay for it.
