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I'm tia Adebayo and this is the Next Africa Podcast, bringing you one story each week from the continent, driving.
The future of global growth with.
The context only Bloomberg can provide. Diasporan bragging rights were up for grabs in London last weekend as Jamaican and Nigerian football teams faced off in the Unity Cup, a friendly football tournament that brings together teams from Africa and the Caribbean in a celebration of culture, sport and shared heritage.
The final will be between My God World.
Re Byes.
Nigeria Eagles.
Twenty one years after its first iteration, this year's Unity Cup was a big ticket seller.
You had closer seventy five percent capacity. I think, considering the time that we had and maybe she'll even looking back at how it's going to be marketed more widely, I think it disposed well for the future.
On today's podcast, we're exploring the role of sport on the continent and beyond. Could the beautiful game become a bridge to diaspora communities and why might now be the perfect moment to market Africa to the world. While Jennifer is away reporting this week. I'm standing in to take a look at the roles sport is playing in African investment. And with me this week is Bloomberg's o La Tommy Wa Tobi in London and are a Bouja based reporter
and Duko or Jimbo. So, Toby, you were actually there in person at the g Tech Stadium in London's Brentford suburb.
Usually quite quiet, but I wasn't quite.
This weekend because there was a very tense match between Nigeria and Jamaica.
Tell us a bit about that experience. What was it like?
Well, for different games than Nigeria plays, is the Nigeria Ghana, you'd call that Dijal Derby. For the Nigera Jamaica, some of us call it the planting derby because planting or planting you who knows, just the crowd, the feeling of the crowd being there, the quality of the football play to go straight to penalties, which is a game of luck, and then Nigeria one five for one penalties.
Yeah, so, I mean it's twenty one years since the last Unity Cup. It obviously sounds like it was a big success, but can you explain a bit more about what the Unity Cup is and how it came about.
Yeah, so the Unity Cup is a game that strives to bring nations, a lot of African nations but others. For this version, we had Afro Caribbean nations as well, and it tries to bring teams and face from these different countries football playing countries to sort of promote each other's strengths in team playing diversity, to celebrate each other as culture. It is a footballing event, but it is an event more than less. We had music, we had lots of food. There there was a variety we had
for this very addition that was Trinidad and Tobago. We had Jamaica, Ghana and Nigeria. And like I said, we had the Jael of Derby, we had the plant in Derbi. So this was a game, a tournament that wasn't just football but using football as a medium to cross other things in terms of culture, to bring in communities together.
Twenty one years ago was when the first edition, or the last edition rather happened, and it's taking a long time to get fas involved, getting teams involved, getting countries involved, and finding partners to work on.
It as well, let's bring you in here.
I imagine there's probably quite a lot of national pride in Nigeria this week and a Boujia tell me how big business is sport in Africa.
I mean it's big here in the sense that you have this huge young population who are really interested in some of the biggest sporting events, so that would be like football, basketball, pigs of boxing and wrestling. But I think the challenge is that it's still viewed mostly as something recreation rather than really an opportunity for businesses to
really come in on frive. And I'll give you a typical example here in Nigeria where we do have the Najera Professional Football League sort of your Premier League in the UK. And what you have here do are clubs are owned mostly by the government, you know, so it's a twenty team league and you have around seventeen of them owned by the government by state governments. You have governments been involved in foot book clubs and running basket book clubs, in running even volleyball clubs, and that has
really been the challenge for invest us. We are looking to really coming to what they think it's a potentially big market if you look at the size of the audience that you know gather every weekend in front of TVs as a continent to watch, whether it is the English Premier League going into the top police in Europe, or maybe one of the fund races going on in any part of the world, or even the Tennis Grand Slams.
You get a sense of how that can really potentially turn into revenue if it is tapped very well.
But at a moment so while it's.
Technically big, with not really seeing that come to the surface because of government involvements in it.
Stick with us, both of you.
When we come back, we'll talk more about the business of global sports and Africans looking to take advantage of it.
We'll be right back, Welcome back. Today.
We're talking about the business of sports as African nature look.
To connect with diaspora communities.
All I told me about Toby and Unduka or Jimo are still with me. So, Toby, you've been speaking to some of the organizing team behind the Unity Cup. What have people been telling you about the effort that it took to put this together.
I spoke to and the house Sea of Afro Sports,
the brain behind the Unity Cup. Really I had a conversation with him about why it's taking so many years between the last edition which was in two thousand and four and this current edition which happened over the last weekend, and one of the things he mentioned is definitely working with partners, getting the right people involved, and that the initial plan was to bring it back in twenty twenty actually before the COVID pandemic happened, which had to put
a pause on the affairs, and then bringing it back sort of rekindling those relationships to try and bring it in. And in terms of support as well, he did mention one of the things about there was a big support from within the UK, the London team. We had the Mayor of London so that he can who was present at the event itself, and he helped really promote the event Brentford Stadium, like I said as well, where big
players and also helping to promote the event. And also the the FA football administrators for each of the countries that participated by a big factor. And one of the key things so also noticed this event was also a FEEFAS sanctioned event, so it is an international friendly recognized by FIFA, so he's gotten the clearances even from the very top most football administrators, and these things sort of take a while to come together, especially when the initial
plan was for the covid era. But the hope is to hopefully have another one next year. There is the big factor of next year is a World Cup year, so it will be a bit more difficult for logistics purposes. But the plan that he has would be in bringing this back on a yearly basis.
So it seems like potential is really the name of the game when it comes to the Unity Cup. Perhaps next year will be bigger and better and Deka, I just wanted to bring you in again. So obviously this event was about football, which is a big cultural phenomenon on the continent, but what other sports saw Cultural events in countries like Ghana and Nigeria foster that diaspora connection. We talked a bit about music, about Afro beats. Is there anything else that's making those links?
I think the regardias had a head staff. Pains me to say that as in Nigeria, but I think they've been tapping into that bastan connection for a while now. I'll say Nigeria is just only beginning to see the potential.
And then there was probably last year in Legos was the first time that we really saw a huge influx, and I would say it was helped in lots small with probably by the evaluation of Nigeria's currency and then most of those that would have stepped back abroad had good value for them money when they came to Tuna, Nigeria. So around the holiday periods you really have people from the diaspora where I'm returning to gan and the government there has really done a lot to encourage that level
of travel. I know they're planning an event in Legos and the success of what they had in December last year, there's a big event that the government is not getting involved in planning for December this year, just to strengthen those diaspora connections.
I think it's a marriage between football and music, where music supports football and football supports music. For even within the football stair, you have Alexi Wobi who plays for Fulham, he is now a musician. You have a lot of the Nigerian football superstars, even the Ghanian superstars as well. You're always seeing them hanging out with a lot of musicians. You have a lot of musicians always hanging out with them.
We have the Afro Nation being held in Portugal July ninety eleventh is also another avenue where African music, Afro beat, high life as you know it is being celebrated on the global stage and it's pretty much a diaspora audience that will be there every year. Ticket are always sold out way out in advance, and these are sort of the avenues not just football, but it's celebrating the culture in itself, celebrating the lifestyle in itself.
So Toby, just thinking about the future, Now, where does this go next? I know you've been talking to some people that have been involved in the organization of the Unity carp and other big events like this. Where too next and how do you expect businesses to capitalize?
Well, I think this guy really is the limit. One of the things that needs to definitely be worked one is getting more partnerships involved. I know one of the speaking to Andy House, one of the things that he said is convincing players really to come to represent their country. One of the sort of difficulties for the Unity Cup this year is a lot of clubs where st you're
playing club football during that season. So on one side, for the community, many of the countries that took part in the tournament took a lot of their home based footballers to play for it. Ghana had a lot of Ghanyan FA footballers based in Ghana, same with Nigeria. Yes,
there are a few superstars that played across board. So on the one side, there's a lot of homegrown talents that you're shipping out who are going to express themselves, and on the other side, a lot of the actual many of the regular first team international superstars see these events and say I want to be a part of it next year. They tell their FA they want to get more involved. So partnership is definitely a big side.
But we've seen how partnership works. When it works, they have come twenty twenty three delayed and was played in twenty twenty four. We saw a partnership between the Confederation
of African Football. We saw BBC get involved, Sky were involved being spots and about six thousand journalists applying for accreditation, which is more than double what was the number of the last AFGHON Because there's much more visibility with this partnership, so more people want to get involved, and when more people get involved, it shows in the numbers it shows in the last Afghan as well. One of the big games that was watching was the game between Ninjuria and
South Africa. According to Patrick Mouzepe, that's the president of CALF saying nearly two billion people globally across various media platforms where watching the last African Coup of Nations. It shows that there is an audience for it. Sometimes the big problem is tapping in where the content is to that audience, and that's where the partnership's come in.
Oh wow, I'm excited to hopefully attend next year and do it and Tarby, thank you so much for joining me on the podcast Welcome.
To Thank you, Tia.
You can read more of our reporting on the business of African sport on Bloomberg platforms now. Also this week, President Trump announced new travel bands on a number of countries, including many in Africa.
The recent terror attack in Boulder, Colorado has underscored the extreme dangers posed to our country by the entry of foreign nationals who are not properly vetted.
We don't want them.
We have full coverage on Bloomberg platforms now, including in the next African Newsletter. We'll put a link to that in the show notes Jennifer's Abazaja will return next week with a deep dive into the impact of these new rules. This program was produced by Adrian Bradley. Don't forget to follow and review this show wherever you usually get your podcasts.
I'm Tawa, added Bayo. Thank you for listening.