140 PSL games on SABC, e.tv
PSL Chief Operations officer Ronald Schloss has described the furore over pay channel Supersport’s acquisition of the League’s TV rights for an amount in excess of one billion rand over five years as "a mountain manufactured out of a molehill."
"The ill-founded assumption that viewing PSL games on TV will now be beyond the finances of the vast majority of South Africa’s millions of soccer fans is simply way off-target," said the PSL’s Chief Operations Officer.
"Indeed," added Schloss, "the exact opposite is the case, with the PSL’s contract with SuperSport stipulating that they must sell a minimum of 140 games to broadcasters operating on a Free-to-Air television basis."
Schloss said the SABC Public Broadcaster had shown little more than 100 TV games live to the South African public last season – "so, in effect," he added, "there will be a lot more free TV soccer viewing for the public than ever before."
But like all carefully articulated brainwaves and ideal plans, this one also contains the seeds of an impasse in that the SABC and e.tv, the only two Free-to-Air Television broadcasters in the country, could form a consortium and set the maximum price they would be prepared to pay SuperSport for TV rights for PSL games.
What would SuperSport do in such circumstances? Or has the pay channel already put in place a safety-valve plan should this eventuality materialise – like coming to a provisional agreement with e.tv already?
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