Kwesé Sports () was a

sport Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, ...

website A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

serving Sub-Saharan Africa operated by Econet Media, a subsidiary of

Econet Wireless Econet, officially known as Econet Global Ltd, is a diversified telecommunications group with operations and investments in Africa, Europe, South America and the East Asia Pacific Rim, offering products and services in the core areas of mobile ...

. Kwesé Sports was launched on 4 December 2015 with the announcement made by Econet Wireless founder Strive Masiyiwa, on the social networking site

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin Mosk ...

History

Strive Masiyiwa, founder and Group Chairman of Econet Wireless made an announcement on 4 December 2015 through his Facebook page of a new pay TV service named Kwesé TV and Kwesé Sports, a website which was live, showing sport news and offering free live streaming of the

Copa del Rey The Campeonato de España–Copa de Su Majestad el Rey, commonly known as Copa del Rey or simply La Copa and formerly known as Copa del Presidente de la República (1932–36) and Copa del Generalísimo (1939–76), is an annual knockout footb ...

football matches (exclude final). The name "Kwesé" was derived from the

Shona Shona often refers to: * Shona people, a Southern African people * Shona language, a Bantu language spoken by Shona people today Shona may also refer to: * ''Shona'' (album), 1994 album by New Zealand singer Shona Laing * Shona (given name) * S ...

word ''kwese'' which means "everywhere" and "anywhere". Kwesé TV officially launched operations on 30 January 2017. In August 2019, Econet Media announced the Kwesé TVs (including Sports) was closed effective from 5 August due to crisis and replaced by

ESPN Africa ESPN Africa is an African pay television sports channel owned by ESPN Inc., a joint venture between The Walt Disney Company (which owns a controlling 80% stake) and the Hearst Communications (which owns the remaining 20%), that was re-branded ...

on 30 August.

Past rights

Association football

On 17 March 2016, the

English Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...

announced that Econet Media acquired

free to air Free-to-air (FTA) services are television (TV) and radio services broadcast in unencrypted form, allowing any person with the appropriate receiving equipment to receive the signal and view or listen to the content without requiring a subscriptio ...

broadcasting rights in Sub-Saharan Africa for three seasons, from 2016/17 to 2018/19 season. Econet Media via Kwesé Sports will air the matches, weekly previews and highlights programs. Richard Scudamore, Executive Chairman of the Premier League, said "We are very pleased that Econet Media has chosen to invest in the package of free-to-air broadcasting rights that we have made available in Sub-Saharan Africa."

Basketball

On 21 April 2016, the NBA and Kwesé Sports owner, Econet Media, announced a multi-year partnership deal in which Econet becomes the official broadcaster of the NBA in Sub-Saharan Africa starting with the 2016–17 season. Econet Media will distribute NBA content in

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, French and

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

across Sub-Saharan Africa on its internet-, mobile- and satellite-based platforms as well as

pay TV Pay television, also known as subscription television, premium television or, when referring to an individual service, a premium channel, refers to subscription-based television services, usually provided by multichannel television providers, b ...

platforms and free to air coverage.

Mixed martial arts

Kwesé Sports acquired exclusive rights to screen the Extreme Fighting Championship (EFC) across Sub-Saharan Africa with the exception of South Africa, which it acquired non-exclusive rights, for three years. Screening commenced on 5 March 2016 with Kwesé Sports offering free live streaming of the EFC 47 event which was held at Carnival City in

Johannesburg Johannesburg ( , , ; Zulu and xh, eGoli ), colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, or "The City of Gold", is the largest city in South Africa, classified as a megacity, and is one of the 100 largest urban areas in the world. According to Dem ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the Atlantic Ocean, South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the ...

. EFC President Cairo Howarth stated "We believe that Kwesé Sports represents the future of sports broadcasting on the continent and will open many new opportunities to new and existing EFC fans to enjoy quality EFC programming."

FIFA Confederations Cup and FIFA World Cup

Kwesé Sports secured exclusive free-to-air (FTA) rights to the 2018 FIFA World Cup and the FIFA Confederations Cup 2017. The rights are for sub-Saharan Africa, excluding South Africa. Kwesé will broadcast the tournaments live through its pan-African FTA channel Kwesé Free Sports (KFS). According to the agreement, Kwesé is the only platform on the continent licensed to broadcast live action of these events free.Kwesé TV gets FTA rights to 2018 World Cup, Confederations Cup 2017 for Africa , aptantech
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Cricket

* India Cricket * World Cup * Australian cricket * IPL * BBL * CPL

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Kwese Sports British sport websites Internet properties established in 2015