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Soccer News of Friday, 7 February 2014

Source: Sammy Heywood Okine

OMP launches 2014 FIFA World Cup Events

OMP launches and unveils 2014 FIFA World Cup Events – Media & Broadcast Rights Sponsorship

Optimum Media Prime (OPM), a marketing company with exclusive rights to syndicate sponsorship for the Ghana TV Consortium has launched and unveiled a package for companies and organisations to be part of the telecast of all the FIFA World Cup events in 2014.

The events are the Under 17 women’s World Cup in Costa Rica scheduled for 15th March to 5th April, the FIFA World Cup in Brazil from 12th June to 13th July and the Under 20 Women’s World Cup to be played from 5th to 24th August, 2014.

The matches would be shown exclusively live on six television networks namely GTV, Metro TV, GTV Sports Plus, ETV, Net 2 and First Digital TV. Hon. Elvis Afriyie Ankrah who launched the sponsorship package hinted that there are challenges in traveling to watch the World Cup in Brazil, so only a few supporters would benefit fro government sponsorship, so the millions who would be at home to watch on TV must support the Ghana TV Consortium. He said all parties involved must collaborate and bring their strengths together for a successful football fiesta. He said fan parks would be created for entertainment and business during the World Cup festival in Ghana and Brazil.

Ghana Football Association (GFA) President Kwesi Nyantekyi said the FIFA World Cup is the biggest social event on earth attracting over 2 billion television audience. “Ghanaians who can not travel to Brazil get the opportunity to watch television, and supporters play a big role. Every body wants to go to Brazil, but only a few will get the opportunity, so it is great news that the matches would be telecasted for Ghanaians live” he expressed. He announced that the Black stars need the best preparation and a number of trial matches have been lined up, such as on 5th March when Ghana play Montenegro, on 31ts May when Holland hosts Ghana in Rotterdam, and then continue the camping in the United States of America (USA) where the Black Stars would pitch their strength against Costa Rica and Honduras. Kwesi Nyantakyi noted that Ghana would start camping on 25th May for the mundial and enter Brazil on 10th June basing in Maceio.

He promised that the Black Stars would be in good shape and hope to improve upon the 2006 and 2010 World Cups in Germany and South Africa respectively. Richard Kwame Asante, Board Chairman of GBC and Metro TV said the Ghana TV Consortium had worked very hard over the years and have succeeded in its programmes, hoping that 2014 would be am improvement.

He urged CEOs, Marketing and Communications experts of various companies to come on board as there are advertising and publicity opportunities. George Lomotey, Cordinator of the Consortium expressed that this is the second time that the FIFA World Cup is being hosted outside Europe in succession and the second time hosted by Brazil. He observed that 2014 was successful, but 2014 would be better as 38 cameras would be used for telecasting the event.

Major (rtd) Albert Don-Chebe Director General of GBC who chaired the ceremony charged all stakeholders to take advantage of the season and be part of the FIFA fever. Talal Fattal, CEO of Metro TV who was prophetic and poetic on the day released the latest version of the Black Stars official song “Straight to the top”.

He congratulated the Ministry of Youth & Sports and the GFA for qualifying three national teams to three World Cups in the same year. He commended Black Stars coach Kwesi Appiah for being the first Ghanaian coach to take the senior national team to the FIFA World Cup.