The Nigerian Professional Football League has long been a proving ground for overlooked Nigerian talents and helped those late bloomers to get professional experience before securing moves abroad.
Clubs from around the world scout the NPFL, and sometimes, a Super Eagles star will come home – as Ahmed Musa did in 2024. Even so, in the face of vaunted competition from leagues in Europe, viewership can be low.
For such a huge country, the top tier of football is quite meekly supported, which likely comes down to top talents mostly going overseas. Luckily, newer platforms are taking on the challenge and finding success in showing the NPFL.
Making the NPFL Accessible and Convenient
The NPFL has long been available for viewing on Naija TV and Showmax to different degrees, with the former bundling it with local channels and the latter often picked more for its entertainment library.
In 2023, Propel Sports Africa decided to pull the trigger on a hefty $5 million annual deal to live stream the NPFL. Since the 2023/24 season, the service, NPFL Live, has gone from strength to strength as a dedicated platform.
Even back then, before the tsunami of buzz for the tech washed over the world, Propel Sports Africa was already talking about how advanced AI technology from Pixellot would allow them to enable the project.
On the last day of that inaugural season, NPFL Live streamed nine of the ten games, creating a new benchmark for the platform looking to push its coverage to millions of soccer fans across Nigeria.
News and updates, the live match experience, and interactive engagement options like polls, quizzes, predictions, and social media integration all bolster what it means to watch the top division of soccer in the country conveniently.
Tapping into the Mobile Entertainment Fad
Sport can broadly be put under the same umbrella as entertainment in a similar way to real-life TV shows. It’s an entertaining spectacle with those invested being there because they want to see the story of the season unfold.
Right now, entertainment is becoming a mobile-first commodity in Nigeria. Smartphone users number over 100 million in the country already, while active mobile subscriptions reportedly hit 189.68 million in May of this year.
With such on-the-go connectivity, convenience is king, and luckily, just about all entertainment mediums have noticed this. TV, film, and even classic gaming have come to meet audiences on the smallest screens.
It’s why fans can play bingo games on the go. The exclusive, themed, and jackpot rooms rotate every few minutes to cater to players who want a quick game and those who want to play several over a session.
Being mobile-optimized and convenient is key to the success of this platform and similar ones – as is the offer of freebies for new and existing players. There is, however, still somewhat of a price barrier for some platforms.
Netflix, the biggest streamer in the world, has made a concerted effort to reach Nigerian subscribers with homemade content. While 150,800 subscribers is pretty sizable, it’s not even one percent of the population.
NPFL TV becoming mobile-optimized and accessible on the go is a big step towards boosting the popularity of the league. Incentives to get more people subscribed and watching would be the next move to boost the service.
