Orange's African football services to expand

Orange has announced plans to extend its mobile platform ‘football fan club’ programme to additional African countries by the end of the year.

The global telecoms giant will continue sponsorship of football events run by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) until 2016, which includes the Africa Cup of Nations, African Nations Championship and African Youth Championship.

Orange launched the football fan club in April this year, a community-based platform that offers the latest news, games and blogs on CAF competitions as well as European and African football championships.

The company has said it will continue its development of services “specifically designed for football supporters” to help keep fans up to date with the latest news and results.

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The programme includes a number of dedicated mobile offers specifically designed for Orange customers. These have already attracted over 300,000 customers in 12 countries and will be made available to customers in the other countries by the end of 2011.

Along with information on the Star Africa website, an “SMS Alert” service enables customers to follow a team or a competition and receive goal alerts and match results on their mobile phone.

Various chat-based services are also available, enabling community-members to start discussions and share their passion for football with other fans in the “FFC chat room” or on the Facebook page of the Orange CAN to go review the match.

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