Kwesé Sports () was a

sport Sport is a physical activity or game, often Competition, competitive and organization, organized, that maintains or improves physical ability and skills. Sport may provide enjoyment to participants and entertainment to spectators. The numbe ...

website A website (also written as a web site) is any web page whose content is identified by a common domain name and is published on at least one web server. Websites are typically dedicated to a particular topic or purpose, such as news, educatio ...

serving

Sub-Saharan Africa Sub-Saharan Africa is the area and regions of the continent of Africa that lie south of the Sahara. These include Central Africa, East Africa, Southern Africa, and West Africa. Geopolitically, in addition to the list of sovereign states and ...

operated by Econet Media, a subsidiary of

Econet Wireless Econet, officially known as Econet Group, 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 te ...

. 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 a social media and social networking service owned by the American technology conglomerate Meta Platforms, Meta. Created in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with four other Harvard College students and roommates, Eduardo Saverin, Andre ...

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 Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming media, streaming of video or Digital audio, audio in real-time communication, real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as ''streaming'', the real-time nature ...

of the

Copa del Rey The , commonly known as , or (in English) the Spanish Cup or King's Cup, and formerly known as Copa del Presidente de la República (1932–1936) and Copa del Generalísimo (1939–1976), is an annual knockout football competition in Spanis ...

football matches (exclude final). The name "Kwesé" was derived from the Shona 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 on 30 August.

Past rights

Association football

On 17 March 2016, the

English Premier League The Premier League is a professional association football league in England and the highest level of the English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Football Lea ...

announced that Econet Media acquired free to air broadcasting rights in

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 The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada). The NBA is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United States and Ca ...

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, French and Portuguese 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 language, Zulu and Xhosa language, Xhosa: eGoli ) (colloquially known as Jozi, Joburg, Jo'burg or "The City of Gold") is the most populous city in South Africa. With 5,538,596 people in the City of Johannesburg alon ...

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

. 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 Sport websites African websites Internet properties established in 2015 Internet properties disestablished in 2019