Communiqué 46: Creative economy investors are betting big on sports in Africa

The NBA and NFL have spotted massive opportunities for investment in African sports. Local investors have done the same. But what do they see?

An art installation by NBA Africa at ART X Lagos. Credit: NBA Africa.

1. An opportunity for those looking

An art fair is probably the last place you would expect to have conversations about basketball, but stranger things have happened. This year, at the 10th edition of ART X Lagos, West Africa’s largest art festival, there was an installation dedicated to basketball, featuring a collage of different hands reaching for a ball. Adjacent to it was another art piece created by the festival’s attendees who were invited to create another collage with newspaper and magazine clippings. All of this made up the third edition of NBA Meets Arts, an initiative launched by the African arm of the National Basketball Association in its drive to grow basketball adoption across the continent.

Since its official arrival on the continent in 2010, the NBA has initiated several programs to help grow the sport on the continent, but in recent years the organization has ramped up its activities, another entry in a spate of sports investment on the continent.

In 2019, during the NBA All Star Weekend, Commissioner Adam Silver announced plans to establish the first NBA professional league outside of North America. But those plans did not materialize until 2021, when the first game was played at the BK Arena in Kigali, Rwanda. The following year, the NBA launched the NBA meets Art initiative, and early this year it partnered with ALX Ventures, an African entrepreneurship development program, to launch an accelerator for early stage startups in the sports and creative industries. Festival Coins, creators of the Tix Africa ticketing platform, were the inaugural winners of its demo day.

The NBA isn't the only entity investing in African sports, earlier this year, America’s National Football League expanded its talent identification program to Nigeria, following successful programs in Ghana, Kenya and South Africa. African investors are also in the mix: following Stripe’s acquisition of Paystack, the company’s CEO Shola Akinlade founded Sporting Lagos, a new football team in Nigeria’s commercial capital.

These investments signify growing interest in Africa's sports sector, but what factors drive this interest?

A collage installation, part of the third edition of “NBA Meets Art” initiative. Credit: NBA Africa.