War of words between GBC, GFA over award of broadcast right for GPL

The Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC) says the response by the Ghana Football Association (GFA) regarding its decision to award broadcasting rights of the Ghana Premier League to StarTimes is not ‘entirely true’.

The state broadcasting firm on Wednesday issued a statement, slamming the FA for being biased in their awarding of the rights to StarTimes.

GBC among other things stated that the offer it made to the GFA was significantly better than StarTimes and wondered why the association decided to ignore it and settle for StarTimes.

But the FA in a sharp response accused GBC of ‘deliberately misleading’ the public and that their final bid did not meet the deadline it gave.

According to the FA, despite GTV offering a better financial package than eventual bid winners StarTimes, other conditions stipulated in the offer did not meet the expectations of the associations.

It also added that if the deal was down solely to financial offers, two other stations offered more than GBC.

“It must be stated clearly that even if only financials alone were considered, the 4th bid of GBC (which was out of time) was not the bid with the highest financial consideration. Two other proposals were higher than the GBC bids but other conditions (due diligence) affected those bids”.

But in an exclusive interview with ghanaweb.com, the Assistant Public Relations Manager of GBC, Francisca Bannerman said the information put out by the FA is not a fair representation of the discussions that ensued between GBC and the FA.

She clarified that the 30 per cent share which GBC included in their final bid was based on the condition that the headline sponsor would want to advertise with the various GBC platform.

She also insisted that the bid by GBC best served the interest of Ghana football.

“What they put out there is not entirely the truth. It’s not entirely what they put out there. When you go for a bid like that or for tournaments you have the league sponsor and broadcast sponsor.

“What GBC said was that if we were going to be given the nod, we suggested that if the league sponsors were interested in advertising on our channel, they can also come and whatever revenue they pay we want 30 per cent. The 30 per cent was for sponsors who were ready to advertise on GBC platforms. So, if they are not interested, we will not get anything”, she said.

She also said that management of GBC are locked in a meeting and will soon come out with a rebuttal to the FA’s statement.