Naspers to lure low-income audience with SuperSport
SuperSport beat public broadcaster SABC, e.tv and Telkom Media to clinch the soccer deal.
Naspers, which is Africa's biggest media group, said yesterday that the deal would help it target customers who did not have a pay TV bouquet.
Naspers's pay TV subscribers in South Africa grew by 140 000 to 1.3 million in the year to March.
Chief financial director Steve Pacak would not comment on how many customers the group expected to sign up, but said the deal gave the company "exciting prospects".
SuperSport has said it would make soccer matches available to e.tv and SABC if the companies agreed to buy the rights.
Rajay Ambekar, a portfolio manager at Cadiz African Harvest, said Naspers's strategy was to target the lower-income market, for which it had historically not priced.
Although the DStv compact bouquet, which targets the middle-income market, had 106 000 subscribers, it was still small in terms of penetration levels.
"Internationally, soccer has been a major draw card for pay TV operators," said Ambekar.
"The growth of new subscribers will depend on pricing and how Naspers packages the matches." He said it was likely that some key matches would be shown exclusively on Naspers's MultiChoice pay channels.
Naspers said yesterday that profit for the year to March declined to R2.1 billion from R2.2 billion in the previous year. Revenue grew 24 percent to R19.5 billion, boosted by subscriber growth in the pay TV business.
The electronic media division, which includes pay TV and internet operations, posted a 28 percent increase in revenue to R13.2 billion.
The print business grew revenue by 16 percent to R6.3 billion on the back of robust advertising spending.
Naspers chief executive Kobus Stofberg said: "While the pace of this historic growth is pleasing, it is unrealistic to expect it to continue at the same rate."
The group expects competition to increase in the pay TV market, as the Independent Communications Authority of SA is expected to license new providers in November.
Naspers plans to delist from Nasdaq and join the London Stock Exchange in the third quarter of this year. Its N shares lost 1.2 percent to R185.90 on the JSE yesterday. The media sector fell 1 percent.
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