Senegal fans had spent a good first half hour in front of their television sets on Wednesday. Against Gambia, Pape Gueye's early opener got the Africa Cup of Nations off to a perfect start for the Terenga Lions, the defending champions. Then... More sound more pictures.
Around the 27th minute of the match, television broadcasting was interrupted around the world. In a scrolling banner, the official broadcaster of the competition in France BeIN Sports evokes "technical problems". Its director of channels and editorial staff, Florent Houzot, told X (formerly Twitter) that a "technical problem beyond our control is disrupting the broadcast on our channels. Our teams are working hard to re-establish a quality link and transmission as quickly as possible. »
Sorry, technical problem beyond our control that disrupts the broadcast on our antennas, our teams are working on it to re-establish a quality 🙏 link and transmission as soon as possible
— Florent Houzot (@florenthouzot) January 15, 2024
Sports News Africa journalist Mansour Loum said there was "a satellite problem". He went on to say that it was a problem caused by "a huge storm" in Ebimpé, Côte d'Ivoire, from where the international signal originates, so all the television channels in the world are impacted. In Paris, where some Senegalese fans were watching the match on a local television channel, the same was true.
- Concern due to weather conditions- Huge storm from Ebimpé from where everything starts
- All broadcasters are impacted
- It is not CĂ´te d'Ivoire that manages the satellite
— Mansour Loum (@Mansour_Loum) January 15, 2024
As a sign of the fragility of the beam, the broadcast of the match had already been interrupted for a few seconds around the quarter of an hour of play. During the anthems, there were also sound problems.