MTNfootball.com launches

The website is dedicated to widespread coverage of the game on the continent, particularly the MTN Africa Cup of Nations and the MTN CAF African Champions League. It is the only Pan-African website of its kind and offers extensive coverage for fervent followers of the game.

The site was launched at the new MTN Head Office in Fairland, Johannesburg, where Santie Botha, Group Marketing Executive, said the website would prove a popular tool for all aficionados of the game. "Our significant sponsorship of the two biggest properties in African football has given MTN widespread recognition over the entire African continent and put the company at the forefront of sporting sponsorships. We have never been a company to rest on its laurels and therefore are delighted to unveil our latest project, the MTNfootball.com website."

Botha added: "In the information age it is essential that tournaments like the MTN CAF Champions League and the MTN Africa Cup of Nations enjoy as wide a coverage as possible, and that football fans around the world have access to the latest news and views around these tournaments. The extraordinary success that FIFA has enjoyed with the hits and page impressions for their World Cup sites is irrefutable proof of the power of the worldwide web in an increasingly technological age, and it is only logical that we seek to leverage our sponsorships the same way."

With the final of the MTN CAF Champions League just a fortnight away and the MTN Africa Cup of Nations to be played in Egypt in January, Botha said both those periods will be filled with tremendous interest in the game, a massive appetite for information and a vacuum which MTNfootball.com will now get to fill.

According to Botha, MTNfootball.com will be a more than useful tool for journalists, students and lovers of the game of football and added that, "MTN is proud to be a conduit for this growing phenomenon (internet) and prouder to now be associated with content that is from the continent, and for the continent."

She also highlighted the fact that the launch came at the same time that the top editors of African newspapers were meeting to discuss the media's future on the continent. "One of the biggest problems they (top editors) will be grappling with is the lack of substantive coverage of events on the continent by Africans themselves."

Botha pointed out that the best coverage to date of Pan-African football is to be found not in newspapers or television stations, but in magazines, internet sites and on radio stations that are produced in Europe.