"Free, live and everywhere, from Nairobi to Lagos, from Kinshasa to Johannesburg." That's the promise CAF is making for AFCON 2027 — and they've now put a broadcast deal behind it.
The Confédération Africaine de Football has appointed Media Experts Limited and Media Business Solutions (UK) Ltd as exclusive free-to-air rights holders for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations across sub-Saharan Africa. The announcement came in London on October 19, following a tender CAF launched in August. It sits alongside a separate pay-TV deal confirmed earlier this month, completing the regional broadcast picture.
The two companies will build a sublicensing network targeting over 500 million households in at least 40 countries — Nigeria, South Africa, Ghana, Tanzania, Kenya, Congo DR, Senegal, Angola and Ethiopia among them. Free-to-air coverage is guaranteed in the three host nations: Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania. The individual broadcast partners will be named in the coming months.
Why free-to-air still drives African football
The numbers from GeoPoll's Africa Football Survey 2026 make the case plainly. In Nigeria and Kenya, 96 per cent of respondents follow football. In Nigeria specifically, 64 per cent identify free-to-air TV as their primary way to watch live matches. Streaming and pay-TV are growing, but they haven't displaced the communal living-room experience that still defines how African fans consume the game.
Media Experts CEO Kunle Falodun put it simply: "Free-to-air television is where Africa watches its biggest moments together, and AFCON is the biggest football moment we have." Hard to argue with that framing when you look at the viewership figures CAF is working with.
The 2023 edition in Côte d'Ivoire drew nearly two billion viewers globally. The 2025 tournament in Morocco pulled 3.6 billion — a record — with CAF reporting a 61 per cent rise in viewership across Europe, Asia and South America. AFCON is no longer just a continental competition that the rest of the world occasionally notices. The audience is genuinely global now, and that changes the commercial weight of these rights.
What else is covered — and why the timing matters
The deal goes beyond the main tournament. It also covers the Futsal Africa Cup of Nations 2026, the Africa Beach Soccer Cup of Nations 2026, and both the Under-17 and Under-20 Africa Cups of Nations in 2027. CAF is packaging its full calendar, which gives broadcasters and sponsors a longer runway to build audiences rather than spiking around a single event.
AFCON 2027 runs from June 19 to July 17. It will be the first edition co-hosted by three nations and the first held in East Africa since Ethiopia staged it in 1976 — 51 years ago. The host configuration and the region make this tournament genuinely different from recent editions. Advertisers and broadcasters staking a position in East African markets now have a concrete hook, and for anyone pricing sponsorship or advertising packages around the tournament, the guaranteed free-to-air footprint across 40-plus countries is the number that matters most.
Both companies have opened the door for broadcasters to discuss sublicensing and brands to discuss sponsorship and advertising. The infrastructure is being built. The competition for eyeballs starts now.
