Balancing Act polled TV channels sports experts, sports programmes distributors and advertising agencies to uncover catalogues of sports TV programmes available, budgets spent by TV channels on sports programmes and major opportunities.
The sports TV segment in Africa is largely under-developed despite several paradoxes; the facts that Africa holds, 1) a very strong sports audience, especially for football games; 2) a large number of TV channels; 3) a pool of talented African sports players active in international games.
Between February and April 2014, 28 African TV broadcasters covering 16 countries contributed to the survey.
What did we find out?
Plenty of opportunities for African TV channels to generate extra revenues, improve the overall sports TV ecconomy in Africa: Grow and diversify the local sports content (co)production sector, set up African sports rights distribution agencies, set up sports TV rights regulations, increase the African sports coverage across Africa and globally, and much more.
The simultaneous growth of the African economy, the booming African TV market and the global sports segment are the ultimate concoction of enablers that are going to individually and collectively fuel and accelerate the development of the African Sports TV Market.
1) African economies are going through a boom period and this has a spillover effect on most African industries and sectors.
2) The African media industry is going to be affected and ultimately benefit from the overall African economic boom. Furthermore the digital migration is transforming and changing the African TV landscape as more channels are being created; DTT, mobile, webTV and VoD technologies offer new consumption opportunities. With digital migration creating a lot of airtime channels for sports, supply for sports content to African FTA broadcasters will increase. There is, however, relatively low supply of locally produced sports content.
The investment in local sports content production and distribution is a realistic opportunity but it has to be in conjunction with investment in local sports infrastructure which still needs significant development. Local sports content is cheaper to produce in Africa than in the Western World.
Sports content whether local or international still has modest returns on investment compared to more developed markets. Live sports events are a good opportunity to invest in and sports federations need to be actively and aggressively selling their content rights to increase their customer base and revenues.
3) This bodes well for the developing sports TV market because the audience will have access and be exposed to a wider variety of sports content. The African Sports audience, which is increasingly becoming well off and demanding, is the growing middle class mixed with a youthful market with disposable income.
The global sports market is a robust economy that has not been affected by the global economic depression with a 3.4% annual growth for the last decade. Sports programming has priority in the programming budget allocations and the SSA FTA TV sports programming budget is estimated to be US$400 million. It is projected to grow by 60% in 2030 and it will be worth more than a billion dollars then.
These three factors will ignite the growth of the African Sports TV Market into the next decade.
There are various deficiencies that are inherent in the supply and demand dynamics of the African Sports TV sectors ecosystem and they are largely due to the nature of historical development of the market. The domination of football content in the sport programming allocation across Africa is stifling the development of other non-football sports content.
This results in majority of the sports viewers not being exposed to other sports and possibly limiting their enthusiasm and participation. Simultaneously the monopoly of sports rights by large pay TV platforms is also limiting the exposure of other sports to the mass market. The available sports content has to compete with other entertainment content because there are a few sports dedicated channels.
The supply of local content, although an opportunity, is still a threat to the development of local sports content market. International sports content domination of the market has assisted in the systematic disinvestment into the local sports infrastructure. The inferior quality of locally produced sports content is not helping to drive the demand for it. While international live sports games are in demand, they are nonetheless very expensive to acquire for local TV channels.
African TV broadcasters often struggle to make the necessary returns from their investment in international sports content. The unwillingness of broadcasters to share broadcasting rights with each other does not solve the exorbitant price problem.
Sports programmes supplier are increasing finding constraints in accessing the market; Therefore their perception of the market is that sports content is in low demand and is not a profitable segment. The lack of audience knowledge and market research is one of the hindrances (listed in this report) to the development of the sports TV market on the African continent.
Purchase the full report: go to http://www.balancingact-africa.com/reports/broadcast/the-african-sports-t
This report is supported by the DISCOP AFRICA event to be held on 5-7 November 2014 at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg, South Africa. The event includes a conference on Sports Made in Africa to take place on Friday 7th. November 2014.
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
Balancing Act polled TV channels sports experts, sports programmes distributors and advertising agencies to uncover catalogues of sports TV programmes available, budgets spent by TV channels on sports programmes and major opportunities.
