eMedia launches fresh court fight against SuperSport over World Cup rights

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DStv's SuperSport breaking the law — Openview launches fresh court fight

eMedia has filed fresh court papers against MultiChoice’s SuperSport over its sub-licensing restrictions prohibiting the SABC from broadcasting the Rugby and Cricket World Cup on Openview.

This comes after the High Court of Johannesburg struck eMedia’s previous urgent application off the roll and ordered it to pay MultiChoice’s costs.
 
Maybe they will get a ruling in their favour, by then the World Cup will be over and it will be a useless win.
 
Syphonx said:
MultiChoice will drag it to the highest possible court if any ruling is not in their favour. It will literally be in court for years.
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Doubt they'll need to. This is SABC's fight if they want it (but they said yes to the offer), not eMedia's fight, and anyway MC has too much influence in this country of ours that can be bought.
 
Good, eMedia is fighting for South Africans.

If they win this fight, there'll be far more opportunity for us to see our national sports without having to be exploited.

Might even make it more competitive for everybody else to bid for broadcast rights, we might see Amazon, Etv, Multichoice and Netflix broadcast some rugby and cricket.
 
Syndicated sport is expensive, always has been.
Viewers can get around it with VPNs which could be legally safe like with the Rugby on some sites. Doesn't mean professional sport should be cheap or free, that is a business consideration. VPNs have confused us about business rules at this stage of the game.

SABC did not make a plan to buy their own rights. That's not Multichoice's problem and at least they made an offer that helped SAns, who should say thanks.
 
Not a pineapple said:
Syndicated sport is expensive, always has been.
Viewers can get around it with VPNs which could be legally safe like with the Rugby on some sites. Doesn't mean professional sport should be cheap or free, that is a business consideration. VPNs have confused us about business rules at this stage of the game.

SABC did not make a plan to buy their own rights. That's not Multichoice's problem and at least they made an offer that helped SAns, who should say thanks.
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No stop simping. Multichoice overpay for any sports broadcasting rights, denying any other potential party the opportunity to bid. No other broadcaster in SA can afford to throw money at the sporting codes like MC, because MC can double dip through both subscription AND advertising..... for everyone else it has to make business sense.

So nope the playing field isn't even, you have a bully locking everything up for years and then dictating what scraps the SABC can get and what they can do with it.
 
Slckrck said:
No stop simping. Multichoice overpay for any sports broadcasting rights, denying any other potential party the opportunity to bid.
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Theory only, nobody knows as rights agreements are almost always confidential. If the SABC did its job it would manage to bid, and has successfully done so in the past.

Business is a hard reality world and the consumer actually has little real choice (legal options), same story everywhere. Our bad economic conditions are the real new problem.
 
Brian_G said:
Theory only, nobody knows as rights agreements are almost always confidential. If the SABC did its job it would manage to bid, and has successfully done so in the past.

Business is a hard reality world and the consumer actually has little real choice (legal options), same story everywhere. Our bad economic conditions are the real new problem.
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The SABC did so in the past, when prices went driven up by MC's continuous overbidding. And it still made business sense. So not comparible to the market today.

You have to weigh up business and national interest, sport is an integral part of South African identity and as such there has to be consideration made for access to the pinacle of each discipline. By allowing MC to hoard ALL sporting codes behind an exploitative paywall, you are not only damaging the sports popularity, but also the exposure of said sport. South Africa isn't the US, the vast majority isn't wealthy enough to waste R1000 on a luxury.

If MC were the exclusive broadcaster of international sports and teams fine, but national sports and national teams should be more accessible to everyone.

Multichoice trying to stop that is not only anticompetitive but also anti-South African.
 
I'll just add this, as everyone's entitled to their own opinion re MC's behaviour (they're certainly not innocents);

These concepts of what SAfricans should have access to or not have nothing to do with the business world. It's a Socialist idea at best, and only a Socialist govt. would consider them. I'll stick with the "comparative hardships" of democracy.
 
Brian_G said:
I'll just add this, as everyone's entitled to their own opinion re MC's behaviour (they're certainly not innocents);

These concepts of what SAfricans should have access to or not have nothing to do with the business world. It's a Socialist idea at best, and only a Socialist govt. would consider them. I'll stick with the "comparative hardships" of democracy.
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It's not a "socialist" idea in fact it's a nationalist idea.

Just because you're a free marketeer, doesn't make everything that clashes with that philosophy, socialist or communist.

The idea that it's just business is infantile in a grown up world. There are many things that governments do that clashes with the idea of free market capitalism yet those governments aren't considered socialist. Import tarrifs, tax breaks....how many farming subsidies does the US have and how many anticompetitive import restrictions does it implement to stop foreign competitors entering certain sectors, yet it's supposedly the bastion of capitalism.

Anyway rant over, back to MC's anti-South African exploitation, it either should acknowledge that it doesn't give a shxt or accommodate the SABC without restriction and imposing more costs by forcing it to have two different streams for broadcasting sublicensed material.
 
Slckrck said:
Anyway rant over, back to MC's anti-South African exploitation
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There is no "anti-SA" concept in these business legalities or considerations.

Slckrck said:
, it either should acknowledge that it doesn't give a shxt or accommodate the SABC without restriction and imposing more costs by forcing it to have two different streams for broadcasting sublicensed material.
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Again, social concepts or what extra costs any business may have to endure as part and parcel of private agreements they may choose to enter into have nothing to do with the current local structure of fair competition considerations.

Twist these issues any way you want, that's the facts.
The only issue on the table here is if MC directly restricted eMedia's OpenView unfairly. It did not. This was a choice SABC made, it had the option to seek out its own rights at the source but simply couldn't afford that.

I'm done here, "see you all in court" :giggle:
 
Brian_G said:
There is no "anti-SA" concept in these business legalities or considerations.


Again, social concepts or what extra costs any business may have to endure as part and parcel of private agreements they may choose to enter into have nothing to do with the current local structure of fair competition considerations.

Twist these issues any way you want, that's the facts.
The only issue on the table here is if MC directly restricted eMedia's OpenView unfairly. It did not. This was a choice SABC made, it had the option to seek out its own rights at the source but simply couldn't afford that.

I'm done here, "see you all in court" :giggle:
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Denial is a virtue I guess. Enjoy your life of fallacies.
 
sparke said:
Can you watch the rugby on SABC through your DSTV decoder??? :'-)
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From an earlier thread;

Brian_G said:
You could equally argue that MC had no reason to monitor SABC's content on their own platform, expecting them to do as required, and that the carrying of Rugby content on SABC 2 on their own platform was contractually SABC's responsibility to prevent.
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Brian_G said:
From an earlier thread;
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If it works then SABC not doing what they meant to or it's not a problem so emedia actually has a point, if it doesn't work, the MC has restricted themselves from showing the sports they have rights to, kinda also giving emedia a point (think cheapest DSTV package) as how is it then a positive for MC customers
 
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