Broadcasting22.01.2025

DStv’s crown jewel

While competition in South Africa’s digital streaming market is heating up, local broadcaster DStv has something that very few other platforms offer — live sports.

Not only that, but MultiChoice has, over decades, built SuperSport into a global leader in the field, with a selection of sports that is second to none.

The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) noted in a recent discussion document that live sports have two characteristics that distinguish it from other audiovisual content, making it particularly appealing.

The first is that it is time-sensitive.

When a sports match is broadcast, the viewer is uncertain about the outcome. However, once the result has been decided, the content is no longer nearly as desirable.

Second, is that live-sports are non-substitutable.

Rugby fans watching a World Cup match or football fans watching the Champions League Final cannot replace watching the game with something else.

This makes obtaining the rights to these sporting events particularly expensive as sports unions or the rights sellers bundle them into exclusive packages, causing broadcasters to bid for them.

Therefore, whichever company can spend the most will acquire the rights, giving them a monopoly on broadcasting a particular event.

MultiChoice owns most of the rights to football, rugby, and cricket in South Africa, which Icasa listed as the country’s top three most-watched sports. Thus, it has a significant advantage over its streaming opposition.

Its over-the-top (OTT) streaming platforms, Showmax and DStv Stream, are two of the only platforms that South Africans can use to stream sports.

DStv Stream has multiple subscriptions, with most sports broadcasting available on its Premium package. This includes local and international sports, such as rugby, football, and cricket.

During its previous financial year, SuperSport broadcast 34,490 live events, more than any other broadcaster in the world.

It offered extensive coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, EURO 2024, and the ICC T20 Men’s World Cup.

SuperSport delivered the most extensive broadcast of any broadcaster of the Olympic Games in Paris in 2024.

It covered 1,200 live events over 2,900 live broadcast hours across 19 days through eight dedicated linear channels.

It offered five OTT streaming channels, a dedicated SuperSport SuperScreen, and 24-hour Olympic News Update channels.

Over the past six months, SuperSport has broadcast 10,240 live events and provided a total of 21,540 hours of live coverage, a 22% increase year-on-year.

SuperSport Schools doubled its user base and crossed a milestone of one million registered users on its app, delivering over 35,000 hours of content over the past six months.

Showmax has made the English Premier League available as a mobile-only subscription at a more affordable price than DStv packages.

This is also something DStv has significant experience in, as live streaming sports successfully is no easy task.

While Netflix tried live sports broadcasting in 2024, starting with a celebrity boxing match that left many disappointed and National Football League games on Christmas day, they have yet to broadcast anything relevant to South Africa.

Other platforms like Prime Video and Disney+ have yet to produce sports content rivalling DStv’s in South Africa.

Icasa has not definitively concluded whether a lack of competitive bidding or DStv outbidding competitors causes its ability to secure exclusive sports rights.

While this type of exclusivity is a boon to the broadcaster, it can also be beneficial to the revenue of the relevant sporting bodies.

“Selling rights exclusively maximises the income to sports bodies, and without this income, sport in SA cannot be sustainable,” MultiChoice told MyBroadband.

“Losing the ability to sell exclusive rights is likely to impact their ability to pay players competitive salaries, fund international tours to and from South Africa, grow their player base, fund development of their sport and maintain facilities.”

A South African Rugby Union (Saru) spokesperson agreed with this view, saying that roughly half of the money made from selling broadcast rights funds the playing and development of men’s and women’s rugby in the country.

A research paper by David Martimort and Jerome Pouyet, “Why is exclusivity in broadcasting rights prominent and why does simple regulation fail?” argues that allocating rights to a dominant firm allows for maximum revenue.

This is mainly due to the dominant firm, such as MultiChoice in South Africa, earning more revenue than a firm with lower viewership rates would lose if it was not granted access to the rights.

By allocating exclusive rights to the dominant firm, this firm can increase its competitive advantage, enhance market power, charge higher prices, and, thus, generate more revenue for the industry.

This also means the sports body allocating the rights has more incentive to choose the dominant firm if it will guarantee higher viewership numbers.

Similarly, not granting exclusive rights to broadcasters causes sports bodies to experience a downward revenue spiral.

Show comments

Latest news

More news

Trending news

Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter