The Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Tuesday issued an Invitation to Tender (ITT) for its package of football media rights for the 2021-2024 cycle in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The ITT offers the media rights for national team and club competitions, including the pinnacle national team events of the AFC Asian Cup and the Asian qualifying competition for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022. There are also the rights to the flagship club competitions — the AFC Champions League and AFC Cup — with the best and most respected clubs competing from not only Saudi Arabia, but also throughout the entire continent. The ITT includes other major and highly-popular AFC tournaments such as the AFC Women's Asian Cup 2022 and both men's and women's age group and futsal events. The ITT notes that the AFC media rights partner will need to demonstrate state-of-the-art broadcasting, engaging and informative programming and creative as well as innovative media output which showcases the competitions and encourages their continued growth — both at national and club level. The highest possible engagement with true football fans is crucial in realizing the AFC's ambition of helping their member associations — as well as their broadcast partner — by delivering competition development and generating revenue, which will be invested back into the game. In recognizing the importance and value of the media rights, it is the AFC's commitment to conduct a sales process in line with its core values of integrity, transparency and good governance built on the foundations of professionalism and strong leadership. The ITT adds that the amount of interest that the AFC has witnessed in its rights offerings so far demonstrate the ever-growing quality of the tournaments staged by the AFC and the rapidly growing engagement with football lovers in the game's largest confederation. We are sure that the rights offering in Saudi Arabia will be eagerly contested. — SG
