Hands Over Centralised TV Rights to World Cup Qualifiers to Double Revenue, FIFA tells CAF

Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) has called on Confederation of African Football (CAF) to hand over centralised TV rights to World Cup qualifiers to double its revenue.

FIFA general secretary Fatma Samoura is pushing for the governing body's control of the sale of television rights from CAF for the continent’s qualifiers for the 2022 and 2026 World Cups. Fifa believes it could double the revenues generated for qualifying matches to the 2026 World Cup when compared to the 2018 qualifiers, and match the 2018 figures with the 2022 sales.

Samoura in a letter to the CAF member nations urged them to sign the mandate and respond on or before Wednesday, August 21, 2019.

Centralised media rights for 2014 and 2018 Fifa World Cups were sold by CAF to Lagardère Sports and B4 Capital. After the 2018 Fifa World Cup, African nations announced that they would be opting to sell media rights independently after having centralised the sales process in previous editions. Big sport markets like Nigeria, Egypt and South Africa pushed for a move away from centralisation.

FIFA is currently analysing the possibility of centralising sponsorship rights including pitch advertising to World Cup qualifiers in the CAF region.