🇳🇬 Nigeria winning = good business, LaLiga's global business empire, and NFL Africa's stealth play

Yet Another Sports Newsletter is the leading sports business newsletter focused on Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

WHAT HAPPENED THIS WEEK…

• 🏆 AFCON: Big nations such as 🇳🇬 Nigeria and 🇪🇬 Egypt have had mixed starts. It’s better for everyone if they do well.

• 🌏 MES QUE UN LEAGUE: LaLiga have a unique strategy for Africa and Asia…

• 🏈 SMARTER, NOT HARDER: Is the NFL the sports brand with the savviest Africa playbook?

• 🐲 ENTER THE WOOD DRAGON: Manchester City announce their Chinese New Year-themed kit. Are other brands missing a trick?

🌍 AFRICAN GIANTS

CAF’s flagship football tournament has so far been wide-open.

Ghana, Egypt, Nigeria, Algeria, Morocco, Cameroon, and South Africa have laboured to poor results against ‘smaller’ teams.

This fits with Omar Chaudhuri’s pre-tournament claims about the tournaments unpredictability.

Great right?

For fans, maybe.

For broadcasters and sponsors, less so.

Moreso than other continents, the African market is dominated by a few big economies - 🇪🇬 Egypt, 🇿🇦 South Africa, 🇳🇬 Nigeria, and 🇩🇿 Algeria contribute almost half of the continent’s entire GDP.

But many of the teams doing well (🇨🇻 Cape Verde, 🇬🇶 Equatorial Guinea, etc) are relatively tiny in terms of viewership and commercial potential.

With viewership in Africa largely based around the national teams, there is far more value for broadcasters or sponsors if teams like Nigeria, Egypt, or South Africa do well at AFCON (or, indeed, the 🏆 World Cup – none of these teams qualified for Qatar 2022).

📈 If these teams do well, more people watch games on TV, more money is spent on food, drinks, betting, and merchandise, there is more to play grassroots sports, and the nations’ moods are likely to be more buoyant overall.

So whilst regional rivals may be gleeful at the prospect of Nigeria yet again flattering-to-deceive, it’s probably better for African sports as a whole if the Super Eagles soar 🦅.

💼 CAF are hiring. Apply here.

🌏 LALIGA’S GLOBAL AMBITIONS

LaLiga’s streaming service LaLiga+ owns exclusive rights to broadcast this year’s AFCON in Spain.

This adds to their growing portfolio of media rights for international football tournaments, which include:

• 🇧🇷 Brazilian Serie A

• 🌏 Asian Champions League

• 🏆 Copa Libertadores

It’s indicative of LaLiga’s unique approach to diversifying its brand far beyond the usual remit of organising football leagues.

LALIGA AROUND THE WORLD

The league has been very active in expanding its global presence. Streaming service LaLiga Pass is available in local languages in Indonesia and Thailand, and LaLiga has physical offices in many non-Western markets including:

• 🇮🇳 India

• 🇨🇳 China

• 🇳🇬 Nigeria

• 🇲🇽 Mexico

• 🇿🇦 South Africa

• 🇸🇬 Singapore

• 🇦🇪 UAE

DIVERSIFYING BEYOND FOOTBALL

Whilst many sports’ global strategies are focused purely on identifying cheap talent, much of LaLiga’s presence is geared towards developing audiences and diversifying revenues beyond sports and into tech and entertainment.

Their global activities include hosting watch parties 📺, a LaLiga-themed restaurant chain 🍲, a B2B technology division 📠, higher education 🎓 and music concerts 🎶.

INTERESTING STAT

Spanish clubs also are remarkably popular in Northern Nigeria - consistently outstripping their EPL counterparts in terms of search queries.