The Confederation of African Football (Caf) has walked away from a commercial partnership worth at least $1bn over eight years, a consequence of its decision to change the Africa Cup of Nations (Afcon) from a biennial tournament to one held every four years, the Guardian has revealed.
The abandoned deal covered the marketing and commercial rights for the tournament and had been close to completion before Caf's leadership intervened. Caf president Patrice Motsepe had spoken publicly about the prospective agreement as recently as July, telling the Guardian in Rabat ahead of the delayed Women's Africa Cup of Nations that "good progress" was being made. "We announced in Addis Ababa this $1bn partnership that we are looking at over the next eight years. There is a lot of good progress that has been made," Motsepe said at the time, adding that a final decision on the winning bidder would come "in due course."
Instead, on 23 July, just days after the Club World Cup final in New York, Caf launched an entirely new tender process for the marketing and commercial rights covering the 2028, 2032 and 2036 editions of Afcon. Bidders were given until 24 August to submit their proposals. Unlike the 2025 process, which bundled Caf's entire competition portfolio into a single package, this fresh tender takes a markedly different approach.
Luxolo September, Caf's head of communications, confirmed that the shift in tournament frequency was the direct cause of the collapse of the earlier bidding process. He explained that after receiving and evaluating bids in the latter half of 2025, Caf had entered detailed negotiations with shortlisted bidders over contract terms. However, everything changed at a meeting on 20 December 2025.
"At its meeting on 20 December 2025, the Caf executive committee took a unanimous decision – in the interest of African football – to move the Afcon to a four-year cycle, bringing the competition into alignment with the international match calendar," September said. He described it as "a significant decision for African football," noting that the change "materially changed the scope of the commercial rights available for tender, with the result that the 2025 ITT (Invitation To Tender) process could no longer proceed in its existing form."
The setback leaves Caf without a long-term financial security arrangement for the seventh consecutive year. The organisation's last major long-term agreement was the 2016-2028 deal with French firm Lagardère, brokered under former president Issa Hayatou, which guaranteed at least $1bn over 12 years — the first contract of its kind for Caf.
Suketu Patel, who chaired Caf's finance committee at the time, recalled in 2019 that the Lagardère offer far outstripped a rival bid from Infront, which had proposed a $450m guarantee over eight years compared with Lagardère's $1bn over 12. Patel noted that an earlier 2009 contract had guaranteed $150m but generated roughly $350m in actual income, leading Caf to project the Lagardère deal could ultimately yield around $1.3bn. He also praised Hayatou's stewardship of the organisation's finances despite political disagreements between them.
That Lagardère agreement, however, was terminated unilaterally in December 2019 under Hayatou's successor, Ahmad Ahmad. The termination triggered a lengthy legal battle at the International Chamber of Commerce, which was eventually resolved when Caf, early in Motsepe's presidency, agreed to pay Lagardère a $50m settlement for breach of contract shortly before the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
With Afcon now set to occur half as often, industry figures believe the tournament's commercial value to sponsors has fundamentally changed. "There is no way that any sponsor will be prepared to pay the same amount of money for a deal in which you would normally have four Afcons over an eight-year period, when you will now only have two. That is certainly a no-brainer," said a former football association president with financial expertise.
Based on reporting from the Guardian (guardian-football).