Good reason gives way to better

The announcement by the Minister of Sports and Recreation, Mr Kofi Adams, that the government has secured live coverage rights for the electronic media in Ghana to show the 2026 Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) Football World Cup live is good news to our football enthusiasts and fans. 

It means that we can simultaneously join the world to sigh, grieve, and exhilarate with the movement of the ball and scoring of the goals as they happen across the US, Canada and Mexico.

It represents a healthy shift in the position of government, as against earlier comments that the government would not expend national funds to enable our people to join in the ecstasy and agony associated with the beautiful game.

It is good that the government has seen the need not to be reticent but has moved from the initial rigid position, trying to pass the buck to the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) and now realising the necessity to bring Ghanaians on board to be part of the football carnival.

It must, however, be noted by the media that this is not the first time that a consortium of this nature is to be constituted to manage revenue that will accrue from the broadcast of the World Cup towards payment to the state for the acquisition of the broadcasting rights.

That was what happened in the last two World Cups, except that the revenue generated was not very significant. Indeed, the coverage rights, estimated at about USD 2 million, work out to about seven cents per person if our population is still 30 million citizens, an expenditure which pales into nothingness as against the expenses to be borne by the state in transporting a few hundred fans to the hosting countries to directly support and cheer the team on the field of play. 

Yielded

As an individual, I feel vindicated and excited that the government has yielded to the more functional and productive desires of the people.

It was the views of political and public officials that funding the coverage rights of the World Cup was not a productive investment and that GBC must and should do so from its internally generated funds (IGF) that compelled me to question and fault the government for its position as unproductive and emphasised the necessity for the government to allocate national resources to enable Ghanaians to watch the World Cup live. 

My position has been given meaning and function.

On October 12, 2025, the national football team, the Black Stars, played their last qualifying match in the World Cup qualifying series at the Accra Sports Stadium.

The GBC was contracted by FIFA to produce the match for global viewing. But because GBC did not have live broadcasting rights, Ghanaians were denied viewing the match. It was an agonising moment where GBC analysts of the game kept talking about the match without the cameras showing any live footage.

This compelled many Ghanaians to ignorantly condemn, with others expressing expletives and swear words against the management and staff of the GBC.

What is worse, some government and public officials disingenuously passed the buck, as if it was because of the visionary bankruptcy of GBC that denied our people the privilege of live transmission,

Government and public officials tried to shift responsibility for such live coverage, pretending that the annual budget allocation to GBC excluded the IGF of the GBC.

So strong was this deceit that even some workers of the GBC believed in the myth as to the incompetence of their management in generating sufficient funds for operations, when stations more limited in reach and capacity were able to finance their operations and make a profit. It proved a Herculean task explaining to some GBC staff that the annual budgetary allocations announced in parliament included the IGF of GBC.

Column

Consequently, I wrote in my column in the Daily Graphic "Thinking Aloud" on Thursday, October 17, 2025, what I titled "GBC failure, Ghana's shame", pointing out that it is farcical and disingenuous for people in government and Members of Parliament to mislead our people to believe that the IGF accrued by GBC was extra money beyond the budgetary allocation.

Such people, I maintained, were playing the ostrich or being cynical. I then pointed out how GBC's IGF was incorporated into the allocation from the Consolidated Fund before being announced as the annual budgetary allocation from the government to the corporation.

Subsequently, I was interviewed on GTV to explain my position and I was exasperated about the belief that some key personnel of the GBC had about the fact that their IGF was never part of their budget and that if GBC management husbanded the resources effectively, the corporation should be able to purchase the broadcasting rights.

I strongly argued that none of the broadcasting companies in the country could afford to buy the rights on its own since it was not profitable and insisted that the state must secure the rights such that the government could make provision to secure the rights in the name of the GBC, but work out an arrangement whereby all stations take the feed and surrender an agreed percentage of their advertising revenue from the live broadcast of the FIFA Football World Cup to help offset the cost of the broadcasting rights.

Rights

The reality, as I argued then and maintain, is that no individual media outlet which operates in the country will find it profitable to solely acquire the coverage rights of the World Cup, especially when the performance of the Black Stars cannot be certain.

Whilst it is noted that some media houses attempted to put in bids, which eventually convinced FIFA to increase the cost of the rights, the Ghanaian market is not big enough to yield profit from sponsorship and advertisement from the carnival.

Now that the government has taken the bold initiative by acquiring the rights on behalf of the media houses, a meaningful contract must be agreed upon to measure total revenue that each media house would garner for a substantial proportion to be surrendered to the government, whilst GBC manages to increase its IGF, which belongs to the state, but could enhance its capacity to raise funds for capital acquisition which hardly comes from government regularly and consistently.