Mobile platform / Orange reaffirms its role as a partner of African football with the extension of the Football fan club mobile platform
PARIS, France, November 2, 2011/ — Orange has been a leading sponsor of the national teams in the Côte d’Ivoire, Cameroon, Senegal, Guinea, Mali, Niger and Botswana for many years. This commitment to African football took on a new dimension when Orange signed a partnership deal with the Confederation of African Football (CAF) in July 2009.
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Orange is the lead sponsor across Africa of the six competitions run by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) until 2016. Today, building on the success of the first Africa Cup of Nations Orange ANGOLA 2010, the African Nations Championship Orange (CHAN) in Sudan in March 2011 and the African Youth Championship (CAN U-20) in South Africa in May 2011, Orange is continuing to develop dedicated mobile services designed to allow its customers to enjoy to the full their passion for football throughout the duration of Orange’s five-year partnership.
Following the pool draw for the CAN Orange 2012 – the Africa Cup of Nations football tournament – that took place on Saturday 29 October in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, Orange reaffirms its commitment to African football with the continued development of services specifically designed for football supporters, in particular the mobile platform, Football fan club.
To provide additional services for football fans, Orange launched the Football fan club program in April this year. Football fan club provides a community-based platform that offers the latest news, games and blogs on the CAF competitions, as well as on European and local African football championships.
The program 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.
Football fan club, a pan-African community for football fans
Football fan club (FFC) provides a community where football fans can get together for:
information: the platform provides all the latest information on the teams and the matches of both CAF and European competitions through a free USSD (1) portal, a voice portal or through a dedicated FFC mobile application) and on the web through the StarAfrica (2) website: http://www.starafrica.com. In addition, the “SMS Alert” service enables customers to follow a team or a competition and receive directly goal alerts and match results on their mobile phone.
entertainment: Football fan club offers various games and competitions that enable community-members to win prizes : football quizz on the SMS chat, “Credit goal” game to win every time the selected team scores, competition among fans in some countries to win tickets for next Orange CAN…
discussion: 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 (http://www.facebook.com/#!/CANOrange) to go back over the details of a match.
About Orange
France Telecom-Orange is one of the world’s leading telecommunications operators with 170,000 employees worldwide, including 102,000 employees in France, and sales of 33.8 billion euros in the first nine months of 2011. Present in 35 countries, the Group had a customer base of 221 million customers at 30 September 2011, including 145 million customers under the Orange brand, the Group’s single brand for internet, television and mobile services in the majority of countries where the company operates. At 30 September 2011, the Group had 162 million mobile customers and 14 million broadband internet (ADSL, fibre) customers worldwide. Orange is one of the main European operators for mobile and broadband internet services and, under the brand Orange Business Services, is one of the world leaders in providing telecommunication services to multinational companies.
With its industrial project, “conquests 2015”, Orange is simultaneously addressing its employees, customers and shareholders, as well as the society in which the company operates, through a concrete set of action plans. These commitments are expressed through a new vision of human resources for employees; through the deployment of a network infrastructure upon which the Group will build its future growth; through the Group’s ambition to offer a superior customer experience thanks in particular to improved quality of service; and through the acceleration of international development.
France Telecom (NYSE:FTE) is listed on Euronext Paris (compartment A) and on the New York Stock Exchange.
1 – USSD: a data-swapping protocol compatible with almost 100% of handsets using a traditional GSM network.
2 – StarAfrica.com is the leading online entertainment website for sub-Saharan Africa, launched by Orange in January 2010. The site includes five channels focused on football, more sports, news, music and education, and attracts over 500,000 unique visitors per month , of which 70% are from Africa and 30% from African-communities overseas.
For more information (on the internet and on your mobile): http://www.orange.com, http://www.orange-business.com, http://www.orange-innovation.tv
Press contacts: +33 1 44 44 93 93
Tom Wright, tom.wright@orange.com
Mylène Blin, mylene.blin@orange.com
