The marketing committee for the 20th National Sports Festival tagged Edo 2020 says no television station in Nigeria has been granted terrestrial rights to produce and broadcast the events of the competition and has called on all broadcast media interested in acquiring the rights to make formal bids to the committee.
Mike Itemuagbor, chairman of the committee says interested television houses should come forward with their bids and open discussion with the committee.
“As at today, no television station in Nigeria or elsewhere has been granted the rights for the live coverage, tape-delayed coverage, practices and interviews of the festival,” said Itemuagbor who says broadcast rights are rights which a broadcasting organisation will negotiate with the committee in order to get the events of the Festival screened on television either live, delayed or just highlights.
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“His Excellency, the deputy governor of the state, Honourable Philip Shaibu says the Edo 2020 will redefine National Sports Festival in Nigeria and part of that redefinition is to follow international best practices where organisers of sporting events count on money realised from selling the broadcast rights to help finance the organisation of the event.
”Television and media organisations pay huge sums of money for the exclusive right to broadcast top sporting events live and we want to make the Edo 2020 National Sports Festival a benchmark for future editions such that we don’t need to pay huge sums to Television stations to cover the event when the reverse should be the case,” he said.
Itemuagbor revealed that the Federal Ministry of Youth and Sports Development has ceded the broadcast and marketing rights of the Edo 2020 National Sports Festival to the Edo State government and television stations and companies interested in making use of the huge platform the Festival represents should discuss with his committee.
He added that the media rights a broadcast station will enjoy depending on the agreement reached will include the right to record, create and exploit the official films of the Competition and/or similar audiovisual products and programming, and shall include fixed media rights, public exhibition rights and in-flight rights.
“These are some of the things our television stations pay for when they acquire the rights to broadcast the FIFA World Cup,The Africa Cup of Nations,the World Athletics Championships and other international sporting events including the Olympic Games. They have to pay to acquire such rights too in Nigeria and we are happy we are starting with the Edo 2020 which the government of Edo state has promised will be the best ever,” said Itemuagbor, a well known name in sports marketing in Nigeria and a proud son of Edo.
