The League Management Company on Monday in Abuja signed a partnership deal with DAAR Communications for the live transmission of the Nigeria Professional Football League matches.
Shehu Dikko, a member of the LMC, who signed the contract on behalf the Nduka Irabor, the company’s chairman, said the two-year partnership deal was to ensure the NPFL reached the grassroots.
Dikko also said the partnership would give opportunity to Nigerians who did not have access to satellite television channels such as Super Sport, to watch NPFL matches on local channels.
He said: “We are giving AIT the right to have the terrestrial right to show Nigerian league matches on its network.
“The idea behind this basically is to ensure that we have more reach for the league.
“There are more people who don’t have access to the league.
“At present, we only have Super Sport as our broadcast partner but the contract we have with Super Sport allows us to have terrestrial partners.
“So that they can show some games on their network for other people that are not privileged to have Super Sport, so that they can watch the game.
“If the league is shown on terrestrial TV, we will have more reach.
“Instead of having the few viewers on Super Sport watching the league, there will be about 160 million Nigerians to watch the league because AIT is a free-to-air network for now.”
Dikko added that the sharing formula of the deal would be 60 per cent to 40 per cent, depending on who was bringing sponsors.
The LMC official further said that the transmission right was immediate and that it was part of the rebranding process of the NPFL, which the LMC was championing.
Anegbe Akiotu, the Group Managing Director of DAAR Communications Plc, gave the assurance that the deal would help the NPFL to compete favourably with the major European leagues.
Akiotu said: “The Nigerian league has come of age.
“Time was when some of us used to bemoan the state of our football and the fact that our stadia were empty.
“Today, the LMC has brought some hope.
“It has been able to show that our football can compare favourably with matches in the Premiership, the La Liga and all the top leagues in Europe.
“In the past few years, we in DAAR Communications and AIT offer that platform to actualise part of this vision of the LMC to take the league to the grassroots and the man on the streets.
“We believe that TV plays an indispensable role in this direction.
“Every week, you will be seeing in different matches from different stadia across the country.
“We want to be seen to have contributed to the process of finding the new Okochas and Nwankwo Kanus in the NPFL.
“We believe that some of the best stars we have had in this country started from Nigeria.
“So why must our football take the back seat and we keep looking up to Europe for best of the stars forgetting that some of the these stars started from home.”
Akiotu assured Nigerians that the company would show star matches of the week while the other matches might come as highlights.
Akiotu expressed optimism that the emergence of the Championship of African Nations by CAF for domestic players would further develop the league.
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