Newly elected Confederation of African Football (CAF) president Patrice Motsepe has promised to sort out the TV rights impasse that has dragged on for a while.

Since CAF cancelled its media and marketing rights agreement with French company Lagardere Sports and Entertainment in 2019, Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers, Champions League and Confederation Cup matches have not been broadcast.

But Motsepe, who was elected unopposed in Rabat, Morocco, to replace Ahmad Ahmad as the new CAF president on Friday, said this would be sorted out as soon as possible.

“We spend too much money in Africa on watching European football. We must get more revenue from selling TV rights,” Motsepe told the media after he was elected.

“In SA, huge money is spent for people to watch European football and it is wonderful. But we want them to spend huge money to African football.

“We know what it is required and to get Africans excited about African football. To go to the stadiums and to pay TV companies to allow them to watch our games just like we pay TV companies to watch clubs all over the world.”

The 59-year-old added that he would use his business connections to improve CAF’s commercial deals and income from television and marketing rights.

“We need to look at these things in a manner that is sustainable. We got a lot of experience. I have been owning a football club for the past 20 years. We won the league in SA and we were the champions of Africa in 2016. We spent so much family money that we will never get back.”

CAF vice-president Ahmed Yahya said they would meet with all the associations in future to start negotiating the rights.

“When it comes to local rights, it is the business of the national associations because it is a source of income. It is also a source of the clubs as well, so from my point of view and the president's point of view it will be exclusive things that will be operated by the national associations,” Yahya said.

“As far as the World Cup rights, you know it belongs to Fifa. In the past they used to be centralised rights at the level of Fifa. At the level of CAF now it is not the case. In our future contracts if we are going to negotiate these contracts, we are going to ask the associations to pull down their own rights to the CAF so that we can represent much better product and marketing.

“We are going to explain this to different associations, particularly when it comes to qualifying matches.”