AFCON 2023 smashes continental viewership record

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The 2023 African Cup of Nations was one of the most successful iterations of the competition not only on the field but also commercially.

AFCON was hosted by Cote d’Ivoire in early 2024 and has emerged as a monumental continental success story in sports broadcasting.

According to Nielsen Sports SA, the tournament set new records and captured the imagination of a total of 10.3 million viewers during the semi-final between Nigeria and South Africa on both the Supersport and SABC platforms.  Globally, AFCON has delivered over 1.4 billion cumulative TV viewers.

There was a 54% increase in unique TV viewers between AFCON 2023 and the previous years competition, rising from 14.4 million viewers to more than 22.3 million.

Notably, however, 70% of the broadcast hours throughout the Tournament featured on SuperSport, with a total unique audience of 3.7 million. This reaffirms pay TV’s unrivalled dominance in delivering premium sports content to audiences.

Despite SuperSport only being awarded broadcast rights two weeks before the opening match, AFCON’s appeal elevated it to the top of Africa’s football league viewership standings, with more unique viewers than any of the other football leagues featured on DStv’s dedicated sports channels. It ranked even higher than the 2022 FIFA World Cup, and it bears mentioning that AFCON had fewer fixtures over the tournament period.

Additionally, the Pay-TV channels emerged as the preferred viewing platform during AFCON 2023, given that parallel broadcasts of the same matches aired on free-to-air channels, but the majority of viewers chose to watch on a DStv-SuperSport channel rather than free-to-air.

AFCON scored higher in viewership than the PSL, Premier League, Champions League and La Liga. Viewership also surpassed that of the 2023 Rugby World Cup Final, and kept climbing as the tournament progressed and the South African team rose through the ranks.

Photo: Ulrik Pedersen / Icon Sport

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Dylan Johnson