The Confederation of African Football (CAF) regional soccer body has added domestic national railway operator ONCF to its stable of sponsors as it prepares to stage the 2025 Africa Cup of Nations tournament in Morocco.
The new deal is a significant milestone as Morocco prepares to host the continent’s flagship event, which will run between December 21 and January 18, with ONCF to play a key role in the travel of fans, teams, and officials across host cities Casablanca, Rabat, Agadir, Marrakech, Fez, and Tangier.
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Specifically, ONCF will operate a special rail service with increased capacity during peak periods to allow smoother travel between the cities.
The deal adds to CAF’s growing list of sponsors for the upcoming AFCON, with oil and gas giant TotalEnergies title-sponsoring the tournament through a deal announced in January that covers 12 CAF competitions in total.
Other major sponsors for the tournament include Moroccan national airline, Royal Air Maroc, Japanese video game developer Konami, Japanese car brand Suzuki, and bottled water brand Sidi Ali
The 2025 AFCON was originally scheduled for mid-2025 but was pushed back six months due to a clash with the first edition of the expanded 32-team FIFA Club World Cup in the US, with FIFA prioritizing the new version as a commercially lucrative opportunity ahead of the country co-hosting the 2026 World Cup.
Morocco became a replacement host for this year’s edition, with the tournament originally given to Guinea before it was stripped of the rights in 2022 over serious concerns around security and infrastructure.
The 2027 edition of the biennial AFCON, meanwhile, is currently scheduled to take place across Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.
The new sponsorship deal comes shortly after CAF announced commercial broadcaster Channel 4 as the exclusive UK broadcast partner for the 2025 AFCON, which will air all 52 matches during the tournament.
Meanwhile, CAF awarded African pay-TV heavyweight SuperSport a wide swathe of rights to AFCON 2025, which became the holder of both English and local-language rights across sub-Saharan Africa.
The Tanzanian-based pay-TV broadcaster AzamTV then snapped up rights to the competition in nine markets, including Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Malawi, Botswana, Zambia, and Zimbabwe. All games will be shown live and in high definition.
