By Roberta Gayode Modin
Director General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), Professor Amin Alhassan has called for a sustainable funding mechanism to enable the state broadcaster to efficiently deliver its constitutional mandate.
According to him, sports rights should be directly funded from government resources because the business of GBC going for sports rights in exchange of huge debts is not sustainable.
Prof. Alhassan maintained that this clarion call was occasioned by heavy losses incurred by the organization from acquiring sports rights in the last few years visa vis expectations from Ghanaians.
“We need a permanent national solution to how to fund sports rights for the national broadcaster within African. Most of our counterparts have a straightforward solution. All sports rights of national nature are paid for by the government so that their citizen can have access to it but we don’t”, he explained.
He made this statement when the National Media Commission (NMC) paid a courtesy call to GBC to strengthen the relationship between the two parties.
In a typical case, he hinted of the inability of GBC to fund important upcoming Blackstars matches in the future.
“Our public service mandate requires that we bring sports content to Ghanaians. And we are happy to continue doing it. But nationally, there must be a solution to how we fund it. Because very soon there will be a very important Blackstars match and we will not be able to bring it”, Prof. Amin added.
