By Adedapo Adesanya
As part of its determination to relaunch its operations in the Nigerian space, TStv Africa has announced acquiring the rights to broadcast all English Football League (EFL) Championship live matches to Nigerians in the 2020/21 season commencing on Friday, September 11.
This announcement was made via the TStv Africa Facebook page, where it stated: “TStv wishes to thank Nigerians for their patience and understanding over the past months. We apologise once again for all inconveniences and appreciate the steadfastness of all those who have stood by us.
“We are now pleased to announce that TStv is preparing for a relaunch nationwide and as part of activities leading to the relaunch, TStv will begin test broadcast services from the 10th of September, 2020.”
“We are again pleased to announce that we have acquired the rights to the English Football League and for the duration of the league games, TStv will broadcast all EFL matches!” it wrote in a separate post.
The acquisition of the EFL TV rights means that Nigerians and other subscribers across Sub-Saharan Africa will enjoy all matches from the EFL in high definition quality on TStv.
This is coming almost three years after the company suffered intellectual property setbacks due to broadcasting matches without due authorisation.
Two separate entities, Turner Broadcasting System Europe Limited, a company which claimed it had the exclusive rights to broadcast Cable News Network (CNN) in Africa and BeIN Sports both accused TStv of not seeking due permission before publicly offering to air their channels.
EFL is the second-highest overall in the English Football League after the premier league. The league is contested by 24 clubs. Each season, the two top-finishing teams in the championship are automatically promoted to the premier league.
The teams that finish the season in 3rd to 6th place enter a playoff tournament, with the winner also gaining promotion to the premier league. The three lowest – finishing teams in the championship are relegated to league one.
Now with a relaunch set to hold, it would be left to them to offer better service value to win the trust of Nigerians who had thought the home-based Pay TV service would challenge heavyweights, DSTv and StarTimes.
Many believe that if they play their cards right, it might be a good opportunity to win to their side upset Nigerians who are not satisfied with the recent hike in Pay TV rates especially from Multichoice’s DSTv, which is the largest Pay Tv service in the country.
