Thu, 28 Oct, 2021
Manama: The Asian Football Confederation’s (AFC) broadcast and commercial rights strategy was agreed on Sunday by the AFC Executive Committee meeting in Manama, Bahrain and these valuable properties will go to market later this year.
The AFC’s broadcast and commercial rights for the AFC’s successful and exciting national and club competitions are expected to be one of the largest sales of football rights in Confederation history
The AFC’s current commercial agreement runs until late 2020 and it was agreed today that the new rights sale would be an open tender process. The rights and guidelines for the sale have been set by the AFC’s Governance Task Force.
AFC President Shaikh Salman bin Ebrahim Al Khalifa said: “This is an exciting time for football in Asia. The value of these rights will allow the development of the game on the continent to grow at an unprecedented pace.
“We have placed good governance and integrity at the centre of our Vision and Mission and we will ensure that the process for the sale of the rights adheres to the key principles. We will have a thorough audit of the process - both with internal and external auditors overseeing the sales.
“We need to set an example by being extremely transparent and the Executive Committee must be across every detail as we seek to optimise our commercial value.”
The AFC Executive Committee also received reports from the various Committees which have met since the last Executive Committee meeting in March including the Infrastructure Fund Proposal which is a part of the AFC President’s Initiatives.
The Executive Committee also agreed to the Member Association Task Force recommendation that a request should be made to FIFA to extend the current mandate to the Pakistan Football Federation (PFF) to June 2019 so that meaningful reforms can be undertaken and that FIFA and the AFC hold a joint revision workshop for PFF stakeholders.
The Executive Committee also agreed that a high-level delegation should meet the Pakistani Government and apprise them of the severe consequences of external interference and the Executive Committee re-iterated its position of opposition to government interference in the running of the sport.
Photo: AFC