As the TotalEnergies CAF African Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2025 continues to grip the continent, African football is enjoying its biggest stage. Since the tournament kicked off on 21 December 2025 in Rabat with Morocco facing Comoros, packed stadiums and millions of viewers have confirmed AFCON’s place as Africa’s most powerful sporting property.
While venues such as Prince Moulay Abdellah Stadium are filled with passionate fans, the true audience extends far beyond the stands. Millions more are watching matches live through television and digital platforms across Africa and around the world.
At the previous TotalEnergies CAF AFCON in 2024, the South Africa versus Nigeria semi-final attracted a record 10.3 million viewers. Across the tournament, cumulative television viewership reached an estimated 1.4 billion. AFCON 2025 is tracking a similar level of attention as the group stages give way to higher-stakes football.
Broadcast rights are the financial engine that powers AFCON. Media companies invest billions of dollars to secure the right to deliver matches to fans in their home markets. In sub-Saharan Africa, these rights are held by MultiChoice, a CANAL+ company, through SuperSport.
Beyond rights payments, media investment sustains an entire economy throughout the month-long tournament. Broadcast teams employ film crews and rely on accommodation, logistics and catering services, creating significant economic activity around the event.
Broadcast licence fees also finance the Confederation of African Football (CAF), the governing body responsible for administering the game on the continent. In many respects, media coverage funds football itself. Revenue from broadcast rights underpins development programmes that identify talent at youth level and help to nurture it.
Media income also supports the infrastructure that makes football possible, including playing fields, kits, match officials, transport and administration. At the elite level, it funds national teams, coaching staff and high-performance training camps, enabling teams to compete at the continental showpiece while carrying the hopes and dreams of their nations.
However, the entire football ecosystem is precarious and heavily dependent on the ability of official media partners to recover the multi-million-dollar costs of broadcast rights. If broadcaster income from subscriptions, contracts and pay-per-view sales fails to cover these fees, the financial foundation of the game is weakened, and football ultimately suffers.
Only large media businesses with the advantage of regional scale are able to shoulder the costs of sports broadcasting. Ironically, their business model is under constant threat because the same sporting events they deliver to fans are prime targets for content piracy.
Viewers may not immediately see the harm in accessing a pirate stream, but the damage runs deep. Where a legitimate subscription would help fund African football, revenue generated by pirate streams flows directly to criminal syndicates operating in other parts of the world.
Content piracy undermines football by depriving associations of the funding they desperately need to survive, develop youth structures and compete at the highest level. It is therefore critical that sports fans understand the harm they cause to the game they claim to love when they turn to illegal streams.
The impact of piracy is global. In Spain, LaLiga has reported that audiovisual fraud costs Spanish football between €600 million and €700 million annually. In the United Kingdom, the Premier League blocked more than 600,000 illegal live streams in a single season as part of its anti-piracy efforts.
Pirate websites also expose users to serious risks, including malware, hacking and identity theft, as well as intrusive pop-ups, viruses, fraud and inappropriate content. When football content is scattered across hundreds of thousands of illegal sites, it becomes harder to measure audiences and less attractive to sponsors, further weakening the sport’s commercial value.
Efforts to combat sports piracy and protect the future of football include initiatives such as Partners Against Piracy, which work to strengthen legal frameworks, support prosecution of pirate operators and users, and educate fans about the consequences of piracy.
Cybersecurity organisations such as Irdeto use advanced technology and digital solutions to protect legitimate streams and track the sources and users of pirate feeds. Innovations like the continuous renewal of authentication keys degrade the pirate viewing experience and encourage users to return to legal platforms.
Ultimately, the most important partner in the fight to save football from piracy is the African public. Understanding how piracy damages the football ecosystem empowers fans to make ethical choices about how they support the sport and encourages them to access matches through legitimate channels.
