The Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) continues to rank as the biggest national-team soccer competition on the continent of Africa. The competition has recorded progress in its commercial value with its teams securing 153 deals collectively for the 2024 competition  However, despite this progress, AFCON teams’ commercial value is still fairly limited in both value and volume when compared to other leagues around the world, GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

GlobalData’ s latest report, “The Business of the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) 2023”, revealed that this year’s AFCON tournament generated a total of $74.75 million of annual sponsorship value.

The Confederation of African Football (CAF) currently stands as the most-followed continental soccer federation on social media, however, with joint federation and competition pages, this data may be slightly skewed. However, the real interest in African soccer is certainly more weighted on individual players, for example Mohammed has collected over 98 million follows across Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter collectively.

Olivia Snooks, Sport Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “It is positive to see the progress and reach that AFCON and football in Africa are achieving. The continent’s national teams are certainly still behind in terms of their social media following, but this is greatly boosted by some top-profile players, who play in the big leagues around the world, including the Premier League, and this is generating popularity for African soccer.”

The 2023  AFCON competition sees 16 sponsorship deals, with TotalEnergies being the highest profile sponsor, occupying almost half of the tournament’s annual value, while also being the competition’s official title partner. Given the vast and extensive nature of this deal, it is easy to understand how this deal stands out. Unlike other soccer competitions around the world, which have partnerships with brands that have been running for years, this year’s collection of deals for AFCON has a different approach, with most deals in their early years.

Snooks continues: “The AFCON competition is slightly behind in terms of its popularity and worldwide presence, especially in comparison to the European Championships, for example. Therefore, brands may be more reluctant to secure long-term deals with high value to the competition, despite it being the top soccer competition in Africa. This may change as soccer in Africa progresses and develops.”

Algeria tops the list in terms of sponsorship revenue for African national teams. However, the overall sum of the teams’ commercial incomings can be described as somewhat limited in comparison to the types of numbers soccer is used to seeing across European nations and clubs, whereby sometimes sponsorship deals account for tens of millions of dollars for a single partnership. Unfortunately, outside of AFCON and World Cup competitions, African-based teams are not a highly commercial entity.

Snooks concludes: “Despite the gap between African and European soccer nations, there is progress and growth in AFCON team sponsorship compared to previous years, which is promising. For African soccer nations, there are only five places available at the World Cup, which is the biggest and best commercial platform for soccer teams. This causes a major lack of representation for African soccer, which unfortunately is what causes a major gulf in commercial incomings for countries in Africa.”