Regional stations bid for PSL rights

Community and regional radio stations want to take advantage of the stalemate over the right to broadcast Premier Soccer League (PSL) games, but they do not have the cash or the personnel to do so should the league and the SABC not reach an agreement.

Franklin Huizies, the chief executive of the National Community Radio Forum, said: ‘We have made a presentation to the league and we are waiting for them to come back to us. The big problem is that we do not have the money and staff to pull it off.

‘We are negotiating with investors who could help us raise the kind of money needed to buy the rights and we are quite optimistic.”

The PSL intends to offer its football radio broadcast rights to commercial and community radio stations other than the SABC, as well as to cater for all football supporters, such as Santos, which do not benefit from the African­language radio stations.

Football fans dependent on radio for broadcasts have been left stranded since the PSL withdrew the rights early in September. The league gave the SABC temporary rights to broadcast the matches, while the two parties negotiated a long-term agreement.

But the rights were withdrawn after the SABC said it was going ahead with arbitration on whether the PSL was entitled to negotiate with other parties or to give the SABC pre-emptory rights, as the public broadcaster believed.

By midweek prospects of a settlement remained bleak, giving regional commercial and community radio stations hope that they could benefit from the impasse.

Huizies hopes to line up investors so ‘we will be able to get staff who will do the job for the stations”.

He could not give a figure of how much the rights would cost and the SABC would not say how much it had paid for the rights that ended at the close of the football season in June.

The public broadcaster has lost its television broadcast rights already to pay channel Supersport International, which bought them for R1,6-billion at the beginning of the season.

The SABC put forward a new proposal with a financial offer to the PSL last week.

Kaizer Kganyago, the SABC’s spokesperson, refused to comment about the public broadcaster’s new proposal.

‘All I can say is that we have given the PSL a new proposal with a financial offer and we hope that an agreement will be reached,” he said.

If it does not win the broadcast rights, the public broadcaster will lose out in advertising revenue as well because advertisers are likely to follow the listenership.

Hyde Davhula, media assistant at Media Max, said: ‘Football has a large number of followers. Therefore, if the community radio stations get the rights, advertisers will advertise on community radio stations.”

Huizies echoed her sentiments. ‘With about seven million listeners surely we will attract advertisers?”

Pearl Sokhulu, managing director of Gagasi fm in KwaZulu-Natal, said the biggest challenge will be to deliver the same quality of service the public broadcaster can.

Johannesburg-based Kaya FM’s managing director, Charlene Deacon, said: ‘Even though we don’t know what the requirements are, we are sure we can manage. We do have a couple of sports reporters who can do commentary for us and finance is available.”