Supersports to show 2023 AFCON as AI predicts Senegal to win

Nigerians can now be assured of watching an uninterrupted live matches of the Africa Cup of Nations as the Confederation of Africa Football has finally granted DSTV, the cable television channel right to show the matches.

DSTV had been subjected to bidding war for coverage right of the 2023 AFCON in Cote d’Ivoire but that has finally been settled in favour of the South African broadcast company.

Sources within the organisation said that they will broadcast the next African Cup of Nations in Côte d’Ivoire starting from the opening ceremony on Saturday and subsequently all the matches.

Meanwhile, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has predicted the Teranga Lions of Senegal to emerge champions at the end of the tournament.

24 nations will be competing for the coveted AFCON trophy in Ivory Coast, but according to statistics provider, Opta’s AI who ran the numbers to find out which nation are most likely to emerge victorious, defending champions, Senegal came out with the most probable outcome.

In a BBC Sport article, produced in collaboration with Opta, the prediction model gives Senegal a 12.8% chances of winning the tournament, a higher likelihood than any other team.

Should the ‘Lions of Teranga’ managed to win the trophy, they would become the fourth country ever to do so, and the first since Egypt won three in a row between 2006 and 2010.

Opta’s predictions model estimates the probability of each match outcome by using betting market odds and their own team rankings.

It then factors in the potential draw and the difficulty of each nation’s path to the final. Hosts Ivory Coast (12.1%) are statistically the second-most likely team to taste glory in this edition of Afcon, with Morocco (11.1%) third.

Algeria (9.7%) are the fourth-most likely winners, with Egypt fifth (8.5%).

Rounding off the top seven teams in Opta’s predictor model are three-time AFCON winners Nigeria (1980, 1994 and 2013) and five-time champions Cameroon (1984, 1988, 2000, 2002 and 2017). Nigeria have an 8.1% chance of lifting the trophy, Cameroon 7.5%.