Good news for free Olympics streaming in South Africa

South Africans won’t have to pay a hefty DStv subscription fee or resort to tricky workarounds involving VPNs or foreign payment methods to watch one of this year’s most eagerly anticipated sporting events — the 2024 Summer Olympic Games.

The world’s most well-known athletics and sports spectacle will be hosted in Paris this year and is set to officially start on Saturday, 27 July, running until 11 August.

While MultiChoice’s DStv again secured pay-TV broadcasting and streaming rights for the event, South Africa’s public broadcaster — the SABC — also secured the free-to-air rights.

The broadcaster previously said these rights cost it a whopping R122 million, contributing 58% of its total loss in the 2022 financial year.

It is likely hoping that it can recoup some of this expenditure through advertising.

According to the SABC’s schedule, most of its coverage will be broadcast and streamed on its SABC Sport channel.

However, given the sheer number of sports disciplines at the Olympics, some events will also be shown on SABC 1, SABC 2, and SABC 3.

All four of these channels are available on free-to-air digital terrestrial broadcasting and the Openview satellite TV service.

Viewers also do not have to be concerned about restrictions on certain platforms like Openview.

Unlike the Rugby World Cup and Cricket World Cup broadcasts, the SABC has directly procured the rights to show the Olympics from the International Olympic Committee.

For the previous two events, it sub-licenced rights from DStv, which had obtained both paid and free-to-air rights for the tournaments.

DStv specifically prohibited the SABC from broadcasting those events on its free-to-air channels on Openview, the subject of an ongoing legal battle between MultiChoice and eMedia at the Competition Tribunal.

In addition to the TV broadcasts, the Olympics can be streamed on the free SABC+ video streaming service, available on the web, Android and iOS apps, and various Smart TV operating systems.

However, it is unclear whether the SABC will be covering every event’s gold medal contest live.

DStv will be offering comprehensive coverage of the Olympics, with nine channels, including a dedicated Olympic news channel available to Premium and Compact Plus customers.

These subscribers will also be able to watch all gold medal events live.

On the Compact package, six channels will be offering Olympics coverage, not counting the SABC’s three free-to-air channels also available on DStv.

However, only selected gold medal events will be broadcast live on this package.

Family and Access subscribers will get three channels and one channel with Olympics coverage, respectively.

DStv’s channels are available via satellite and its DStv Stream service on the web, mobile apps, or Smart TV apps.

MultiChoice is also offering a selection of Olympics events on its Showmax Premier League Mobile plan.

This coverage will include soccer, basketball, swimming, gymnastics, athletics, sevens rugby, and field hockey events.

South African athletes to watch out for

In this year’s Olympics, Team South Africa will consist of 149 athletes competing in 21 sports.

This is smaller than the contingent of 185 in the previous Summer Olympics in Tokyo, where South African athletes won three medals.

While not the country’s worst medal performance, it was substantially less than the 10 won in the 2016 London Olympics.

Among the favourites to make the podium in 2024 are:

• Tatjana Smith — 100-meter and 200-meter breaststroke
• Akani Simbine — Men’s 100-meter dash
• Wayde van Niekerk– Men’s 400-meter sprint
• Blitzboks sevens rugby team

The opening ceremony of the 2024 Olympics will be held on the evening of Friday, 26 July.

Several events, like the first group games of the soccer and sevens rugby competitions, will kick off a few days earlier than the main Games.

The table below summarises all the platforms on which the Olympics will be broadcast or streamed in South Africa and the extent of coverage from each service.