The Ghana Football Association (GFA) has officially announced that Chinese-owned pay-TV operator StarTimes will resume broadcasting the Ghana Premier League (GPL) in February.
This deal follows several weeks of negotiations between the GFA and StarTimes, marking the company's return to Ghanaian football after it lost its broadcasting rights last year due to unresolved financial issues with the GFA.
StarTimes originally secured the GPL broadcast rights in 2016 under a ten-year agreement worth $17.9 million. However, complications in the partnership led to a suspension of coverage, creating a gap in live broadcasting for the league.
Nana Oduro Sarfo, a member of the GFA Executive Council, confirmed the news during an interview on Guide FM.
Sarfo explained:
The last time I spoke about StarTimes was four weeks ago. StarTimes will come in February. The GFA doesn’t have any contract with a media house at the moment. Since we had no TV rights and our matches were not going public, we decided to engage certain companies to handle it for a specific time and even put it on our GFA app. But that is now gone.
He added:
If by February, StarTimes comes on board, everything ceases, and nobody will have access to the rights anymore. They will take over completely.
In the meantime, the Ghana Premier League has been aired on several TV stations, including Metro TV, Original TV, Net2 TV, and AFA Sports.
During that period there’s been concerns raised about the quality of broadcast on these free-to-air channels. Clubs also reportedly did not receive any funds from the broadcasting deal.
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