CANAL+ has secured exclusive broadcast rights to every UEFA men’s club competition across more than 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa, locking in coverage of Europe’s biggest football matches for four seasons through 2031.
The agreement, announced this week, covers the UEFA Champions League, Europa League and Conference League, along with the Youth League and the Super Cup. Coverage begins in mid-2027 and runs through the 2030/31 season, spanning English, French and Portuguese speaking markets across the region.
How the rights split by region
In English and Portuguese speaking Africa, SuperSport keeps its position as the exclusive broadcaster of UEFA men’s club football, extending a relationship that has defined sports viewing on the continent for years.
French speaking Africa gets the bigger shift. CANAL+ Sport regains full Champions League coverage there and, for the first time, picks up exclusive French language rights to the Europa League and Conference League as well. Subscribers in those markets will watch all three competitions on CANAL+ Sport starting with the 2027/28 season, ending an arrangement that had split rights with rival broadcasters, including Togo based New World TV, in previous cycles.
CANAL+ beat out competition to land the deal. Some markets drew more than 20 rival bids before UC3, the joint venture between UEFA and the European Club Association that sold the rights, and sales agent Relevent Football Partners settled on CANAL+.
What subscribers get
The rights package brings CANAL+ channels the continent’s biggest football stars, from Erling Haaland and Kylian Mbappé to Victor Osimhen and Lamine Yamal, playing for clubs across England, France, Spain, Italy, Germany and Portugal. UEFA club competitions join a football lineup that already includes the Premier League, LaLiga, Ligue 1 and the Betway Premiership on SuperSport channels, along with the TotalEnergies Women’s Africa Cup of Nations, currently underway in Morocco.
CANAL+ chief executive Maxime Saada called the acquisition proof that the group now runs the most attractive sports offering in sub-Saharan Africa. He also thanked UC3 and Relevent for extending trust CANAL+ had already built through recent rights deals in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Poland and Austria.
Part of a bigger sports and Africa push
Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but the acquisition fits a pattern of CANAL+ building out its live sports catalogue aggressively since taking full control of MultiChoice in September 2025. Securing every UEFA club competition across the continent, rather than splitting rights market by market, gives the group a cleaner platform to sell subscriptions on the strength of football alone, a strategy that has worked in its core European markets.
CANAL+ now operates in more than 70 countries with about 15,000 employees and over 40 million subscribers across its entertainment platform, which spans MultiChoice, STUDIOCANAL, Dailymotion and stakes in Viaplay and Viu. Locking down UEFA football through 2031 gives it a long runway to grow that subscriber base in one of the fastest growing pay television markets in the world, with SuperSport and CANAL+ Sport now positioned as the only place on the continent to watch Europe’s top clubs compete.
