There has been an outcry from football fans worldwide after a broadcast failure was encountered during the Africa Cup of Nations Group C match between Senegal and Gambia at Charles Konan Banny Stadium, in Yamoussoukro, Ivory Coast, on Monday.
The video feed from the stadium dropped completely for a period of the match. That was preceded with the clash starting with no commentary feed, with only crowd noise heard on the broadcast.
SA pay-tv broadcaster SuperSport said on X (formerly Twitter): "We're experiencing technical difficulties with the pictures incoming from the venue in the #TotalEnergiesAFCON2023 match between Senegal and Gambia. Our team is actively working to resolve the issue.”
Global audiences were affected, as SkySports and SABC also reported the signal loss from the venue.
Apologies abound
SkySports also issued an apology with a message on screen reading: “We’re really sorry for this temporary fault.”
Florent Houzot, broadcaster from BeIn Sports confirmed the global outage, posting on X: "Sorry technical problem beyond our control which disrupts broadcasting on our antennas our teams are working to re-establish a quality connection and transmission as quickly as possible."
It’s an especially poor advert for African football, and the Confederation of African Football led by president Patrice Motsepe.
The defending champions Senegal, meanwhile, produced the goods on the pitch as they romped to a 3-0 win over their less-fancied opponents. A fourth minute opener from Pape Gueye and a second half brace from Lamine Camara saw the African powerhouse ease to victory.
It’s no surprise then, that fans were left seething as they could not watch the match for large parts of the clash, and the lack of commentary did not help either.
X user @Remmy_official1 said: “No commentary Afcon is a joke”
@cristianwaniaye said: “AFCON is such a joke. What do you mean broadcast is off”
@KahunaKome said: “2024 and AFCON is still struggling to broadcast a world feed?
This why you can’t defend the tournament & organisation of it too much, because they will inevitably embarrass you”