Is satellite TV killing African football?
By Piers Edwards
BBC Sport
29 January 2013 Last updated at 01:33
When satellite television started broadcasting the top leagues of Europe around the world in the
mid-1990s, football lovers in Africa must have been unsure whether to laugh or cry.
On the one hand, they could suddenly watch some of the best club football on the planet -
simply by turning on the TV.
At the same time, the realisation must have dawned that the local league they had been watching
for years was a sub-standard product to the one found in countries like England, Spain and Italy.
It wasn't always thus though - for African club football's heyday came in the 1970s and 1980s
when vast crowds, sometimes 100,000 strong, regularly flocked to league games and the leading
pan-African club competitions.
By the 1990s, however, the state of Africa's leagues had become a major worry.
The exodus of players to Europe, which today is a flood, was beginning to become significant,
meaning local fans were denied the chance to watch the best talents as they left for greener
pastures, while many leagues were also blighted by poor organisation, corruption, chronic
infrastructure, low crowds and sometimes a combination of all four.
The best African players now play in Europe
European football was most welcome when it arrived, as fans feasted upon the chance to watch
legendary clubs like Real Madrid, AC Milan and Manchester United on a regular basis, but the
impact on the diminishing local leagues - North Africa aside - has been less well received.
Empty seats
"The advent of satellite TV has certainly taken away the feel people had for the local league -
more so when you have the likes of Lionel Messi at your fingertips," Ghanaian football
commentator Karl Tufuoh told BBC Sport. "It's clear local attendance has been massively
affected."
Tufuoh was speaking at the Accra Sports Stadium, whose 40,000 red, yellow and green seats
were more or less all visible for a league clash between top clubs Liberty Professionals and
Asante Kotoko on a recent Sunday.
A few miles down the road, the bar at the Alisa Hotel was overflowing with fans who had come to
watch two crunch English Premier League (EPL) clashes.
"Maybe if we had no option, we would have to follow our local league," said one customer, Kojo.
"But if you find something better than the local league, you would watch the better one."
The situation in Ghana is far from unique - it is played out in countless African cities every
weekend.
In fact, the attendances became so insignificant in many African leagues that they have been
scheduling domestic kick-offs to avoid the big European matches.
However, there has been a recent reversal in the declining attendances as a previously-unseen
factor has entered the market: Satellite television that now broadcasts some of Africa's leagues.
In 2006, South African broadcaster Supersport started to air matches from both its own league
and Nigeria's on the DSTV network, which is broadcast across the continent for those who can
afford it.
Seven years on, SuperSport also owns the rights to games in Kenya, Zambia, Uganda, Ghana,
Angola and Tanzania.

My take.
I have always said that live footie is killing our game. Doncaster & co at Hampden obviously can't see that. I know that the top clubs have become too dependent on Tv cash but is it not time now to stop this almost daily live games??

live games are fine if no other fixtures are on. Important international's, cup finals, fine. if it's not Celtic, on Sat 1/2 twelve, it's man u in the afternoon. Barca, Sunday with sky super Sunday, and many others all over Europe coming live, midweek as well. Saturation leads to boredom. Get it off the telly so more fans through time go see their local team. Through time as addiction takes time to wean off.

Taking a quoted from above text. "Maybe if we had no option, we would have to follow our local league," said one customer, Kojo. EXACTLY!!!

Last chapter of this piece seems to suggest it's not televised matches per se that's the problem, just foreign televised matches. In the territories which show their own domestic leagues, the article states that the decline in attendances has been reversed.

Perhaps Fifa needs to implement a rule requiring a foreign league to obtain the agreement of the home FA before they can send televised broadcasts to detract from the local game. The home FA could then charge a fee for such consent and distribute the money in in the game locally.

It's not clear in what way declining attendances have been reversed with the advent of local televised games. I assume they mean attendances in the top leagues only. I imagine in each of those countries, there is a "league division 2", which is now suffering reduced attendances as the top teams splash their wares across local screens.

Maybe FA's should be claiming a much bigger slice of TV revenues and distributing more widely throughout the game.