While the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) shouts and stomps its feet after having lost the rights to the drawcard that is Premier Soccer League (PSL) football, industry insiders accuse the public broadcaster of double standards and insist that its showing of public bravado is just sour grapes.
The SABC maintains that the PSL has acted in bad faith and is relying on its legal challenge to the SuperSport and PSL soccer-rights deal to deliver the million-dollar drawcard back to its clutches.
The SABC was not alone in expressing outrage on the announcement of the deal, with Sport and Recreation Minister Makhenkesi Stofile, Parliament’s sport and recreation committee chairperson Butana Khompela, the Congress of South African Trade Unions and the South African Communist Party all condemning the deal.
Sources close to the negotiating process insist that the SABC is to blame for the loss of the PSL rights, because it refused continuously to engage in negotiations with the PSL late last year when it was reminded that its five-year rights deal was up for renewal.
The previous broadcasting rights deal saw the SABC secure PSL rights for R67-million a year. The SABC then sub-licensed games to SuperSport for what some sources claim was as much as R38-million a year, while also raking in an estimated R100-million in advertising revenue during the broadcasting of games and soccer-related programming.
However, now that SuperSport has been awarded the rights to broadcast PSL games, the SABC is refusing to negotiate a sub-licensing deal with SuperSport for the 150 games that the PSL has stipulated must be broadcast on a free-to-air channel.
“The SABC’s immature reaction suggests that unless they get everything they are not interested,” said an industry insider who did not wish to be named.
The SABC has been subject to further criticism when it emerged that it had recently concluded a deal whereby it will fork out a reported R93-million a year for one low-profile Monday-night English Premier League game a week.
Analysts have predicted it is unlikely that advertisers will jump ship from the SABC to SuperSport because the pay-TV operator has much smaller audiences, but that if e.tv secured the rights to the 150 PSL games that have been set aside for free-to-air broadcast, the advertisers are more likely to jump ship.
An industry insider said the SABC acted “as if they are the only broadcaster that could ensure that the poor got to watch football and they had forgotten that there was another free-to-air channel”.
The fallout over the PSL rights deal has allowed e.tv already to secure broadcast rights for the season-opener Telkom Charity Cup, which is estimated to earn the free-to-air channel R4-million in revenue.
Despite a promise made personally by SABC CEO Dali Mpofu last week that he would grant the Mail & Guardian an interview to discuss the PSL rights issue this week, more than a dozen calls to his office and to SABC spokesperson Kaizer Kganyago were unsuccessful.