AFCON - Post Event Analysis

An analysis of the recent AFCON event, including a look at its sponsorship portfolio, broadcasters and viewership.

COVID-19 remained a threat to AFCON throughout, affecting a couple of the squads who suffered significant outbreaks. In addition, many fans were put off by the strict protocols required to attend games, which included a vaccine certificate and a negative PCR test. While official attendances figures for every game are currently unavailable, it's likely lower than the Cameroonian Football Association were hoping for. Despite this, viewing figures across Africa were considered strong, with over 65 million potential viewers in Nigeria.

Key Highlights

• In order to encourage vaccination, entry to stadiums was restricted on the conditions that entrants must be fully vaccinated and return a negative PCR test. These restrictions contributed to generally low attendance throughout the tournament. Tunisia and the Comoros were the only two nations to suffer COVID outbreaks during the tournament, with the latter being forced to field a team without a goalkeeper for their knockout game against Cameroon. The team fielded a left-back in goal for much of the game, and narrowly lost 2-1 to the host nation.
• Nationwide case rates were in the hundreds for the majority of the tournament However, testing numbers for the nation will likely be lower than the actual number of cases due to reduced testing capacity in comparison to other nations.
• A record number of broadcasters obtained rights to air this edition of AFCON, with the tournament show on TV in 157 different countries. Global broadcasters included ESPN, BeIN Sports and the BBC across major territories. Additionally, for any territories not covered by these partners, live games were made available to watch for free on the CAF YouTube channel, CAF TV and cafonline.com, ensuring that this was the most accessible AFCON tournament ever.
• In Nigeria, viewing figures for the tournament were strong thanks to the national 24-hour, free-to-air channel AfroSport TV, which hit over 18 million TV sets across the country. This was achieved through collaboration with three of Nigeria’s terrestrial networks, NTA, STV and AIT as well as several other partners. Estimates speculate that over 55m people could have watched the knockout game between Egypt and Nigeria. These same estimates also place the total Nigerian viewership for the tournament at approximately 65 million, which highlights that interest in the tournament remains strong in its home continent.
• The title sponsor for AFCON was TotalEnergies, who agreed to become the title sponsor for African soccer at large in 2016. The eight-year deal is set to expire in 2024, and sponsors every level including youth soccer as well as the women’s game.

Scope

• This report provides an overview of the event including the sponsorship activation, analysis of the COVID-19 situation, as well as at viewing figures for the event.
• A thorough breakdown of how COVID-19 affected both the fans and the teams, as well as the current situation in Cameroon regarding the pandemic.
• A look at the main sponsors of the event, as well as some estimated values for some of these deals.

Reasons to Buy

• For those wanting an in depth analysis of how the first African soccer's flagship tournament performed after several delays and obstacles to hurdle.
• The report analyses how popular AFCON is on its home continent, as proven by the tournament's strong TV figures in Africa.