Nigerian football lovers will have to say goodbye to English Premier League (EPL) and UEFA Championships League as MultiChoice is planning of not renewing the broadcasting right to those prestigious league matches in Nigeria from 2020/21 football season.
MultiChoice is a South African company that operates the DStv Satellite Television service, a major satellite TV service in Sub-Saharan Africa, reportedly said that they barely making enough revenue from the venture when compared to the amount it spends to acquire broadcast rights for the competitions each season. To this end, Multichoice is considering not renewing the rights, according to THISDAY.
Renewing the broadcast rights to the EPL costs MultiChoice $250 million and an additional $100 million for the UEFA Champions League. In spite of the high number of MultiChoice subscribers in Nigeria, the Nigerian arm of the Group is not making enough profit from the venture which has become increasingly expensive.
An anonymous source reportedly told THISDAY that since rights to broadcast in Nigeria became separated from the rest of Africa, things were bound to go wrong.
“It is becoming impossible to maintain many of these sports rights, especially the EPL, for Nigeria. The recent fall of the naira against the dollar has equally not helped matters,” the source said.
The company’s annual report, published at the end of last month, showed a gaping hole in its Nigerian operations, a situation the source attributed to the cost of EPL rights, as well as those for other competitions such as the UEFA Champions League to Nigeria, which is charged separately to the rest of Africa.
“Rights for the African continent used to be bought singly, but this changed in 2007 when a competitor, backed by the federal government, forced the EPL to excise Nigeria from the rest of Africa. Now, the cost of the rights for Nigeria has risen to almost the same with the rest of the continent put together, while the number of subscribers Nigeria is only about one-quarter of the rest of the continent,” the source said.