Gary Al-Smith asks why Africa’s own homegrown Nations’ Cup has been so overpriced that many African countries are suffering to watch their own event. Angola 2010 has come and gone and we now know the winners and know the losers on the pitch. Yet, there were hundreds of millions of losers in homes across Africa who wanted to see their teams but could not. Before the start of the tournament, many people in homes across Africa were not sure if they could take part in the tournament. The costs for broadcasting rights had soared to the high heavens and had threatened to leave several African Nations from the football fun that was in Angola 2010. Ghana was nearly among these. Many readers may not be aware that for the timely intervention of the Government of Ghana, we would not have seen tournament on free-to-air TV and the joy (or pain, depending on how to you see it) of placing second would have been lost on the populace. In the past year or so, three Ghanaian television stations – the state-owned Ghana Television (GTV), TV3 and Metropolitan Entertainment Television (Metro TV) - have successfully joined forces in a consortium to buy rights for major FIFA tournaments to show viewers. That is how they were able to show the FIFA Confederations’ Cup in South Africa, the Under 20 FIFA World Cup in Egypt and the Under 17 FIFA World Cup in Nigeria. Naturally, we expected the same to be the case for Angola 2010. What happened was that the consortium resorted to the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB, formerly known as URTNA) to secure broadcast rights for the Angola showpiece. The stations could not foot the whopping US$ 1.5 million quoted by right owners AFNEX LC2. At the time, Ken Ashigbey, General Manager of Optimum Media Prime, who fronted for the consortium said: “We have spoken with AUB and I am very hopeful that we will be able to tie the deal in the shortest possible time." Yet even with this point, he went on to hit the nail on the head on a salient issue: "The US$1.5 million is on a high side for the Ghanaian economy and many economies in Africa especially will struggle to find the money. We have told them there is unity in strength and because this is an African event, it is imperative that Africans are given the right to watch the tournament and enjoy it." Ghana was among the lucky few whose government’s stepped in to offset the costs. Tunisia was not so lucky so they did not watch a single game on free-to-air and had to make do with coverage from digital and cable TV. The crux of my beef with the rights holders is this: why do we have to fight every time the Africa Cup of Nations is played? Why is there an unseemly tussle over the cost of rights? The sales agent for the event is LC2-AFNEX and it names unrealistic prices for buying the rights. A good many African broadcasters are resigned to despair and do not even try to foot the bill which is, frankly, outrageous. At the last minute, some get Government funding (like Ghana did) to help and annoyingly, LC2 accepts a lower price. All this happens weeks or days before the Nations Cup starts and that means that promoting the event in the run-up to kickoff is lost. If you recall the adverts for Angola 2010 started rolling rather late on the screens. Metro TV started running promos on the 3rd of January, just seven days to the start of the event! Anyone in broadcasting would tell you this is unacceptable because you then give viewers little time to mentally prepare for the event. I feel there is a better way to help African football and broadcasting to help each other grow. T The problem The organizers of the Africa Cup of Nations are the Confederation of African Football (CAF) and the biennial event dubbed Angola 2010 is the 27th time it has been played. CAF sells the rights to broadcast the event's matches to a company called LC2-AFNEX which through LC2 Medias is owned by LC2 TVNETELECOM. The latter is a Beninois company launched in 1997 that also does regional Pay TV and has recently got into Internet TV. It got its first contract to sell the event in 2003. AUB is supposed to assist the process and support it with a marketing plan. However, in effect, the AUB has become implicated in the whole process of trying to get extremely high rights fees out of African broadcasters. The issue has been a running sore for many years so when Larry Atiase, the AUB's CEO wrote to broadcasters – including Ghana – on 30 December 2009 he attempted to strike a conciliatory note. Atiase said the fees have been segmented into different groups. Under the reference ‘AUB/LC2 -- AFNEX Final Proposal, AFCON 2010 broadcast rights’, Atiase wrote: "I have the pleasure to inform you that AUB/LC2-AFNex negotiations on AFCON 2010 broadcast rights have led to proposals indicated below: