The marketing committee for the 20th National Sports Festival tagged: ‘Edo 2020’ said no television station in Nigeria has been granted terrestrial rights to produce and broadcast the events of the competition and has called on all broadcast media interested in acquiring the rights to make formal bids to the committee.
Mike Itemuagbor, Chairman of the committee said interested television houses should come forward with their bids and open discussion with the committee.
“As at today, no television station in Nigeria or elsewhere has been granted the rights for the live coverage, tape-delayed coverage, practices and interviews of the festival,” said Itemuagbor, who said broadcast rights are rights which a broadcasting organisation will negotiate with the committee to get the events of the festival screened on television either live, delayed or just highlights.
“His Excellency, the Deputy Governor of the state, Philip Shaibu said the Edo 2020 will redefine National Sports Festival in Nigeria and part of that redefinition is to follow international best practices, where organisers of sporting events count on money realised from selling the broadcast rights to help finance the organisation of the event.
“Television and media organisations pay huge sums of money for the exclusive right to broadcast top sporting events live and we want to make the Edo 2020 National Sports Festival a benchmark for future editions such that we don’t need to pay huge sums to television stations to cover the event when the reverse should be the case,” he said.