The Nigerian Television Authority, the nation’s public broadcaster, has acquired sublicensed rights to one English Premier League fixture per match week.
The deal was done with Integral Sponsorship and Experiential Marketing, a Nigerian sports marketing company, after the Infront agency sold the rights on. The deal covers the 2019-20 season.
NTA’s deal also includes the rights to broadcast Premier League-produced magazine programmes which will be aired on a weekly basis.
Jean-François Jeanne, managing director at Infront France, said: “Nigeria is a key market for the English Premier League. Together with Integral we hope to maximise its media exposure in the country and provide an opportunity for passionate Nigerian fans to follow the action on free-to-air TV.”
The deal mimics the agreements signed in South Africa by Infront with free-to-air broadcaster OpenView and with Ghanaian FTA broadcaster Max TV, though the latter only covers the 2019-20 season.
Infront acquired the Premier League’s free-to-air distribution rights in over sub-Saharan African countries for the 2019-2o to 2021-22 cycle, though it is expected that the agency faces a challenge to extract value over the lifespan of the contract due to the demise of Kwesé TV.
Infront is managing the sale of the rights through its newly-created Africa division based in Paris and the Premier League sales mandate follows on from the agency’s distribution of free-to-air rights in the region to the 2016 Olympic Games.
Pan-African pay-television broadcaster SuperSport holds the pay-television rights to the Premier League across Sub-Saharan Africa during the current cycle.