{"id":325,"date":"2007-06-19T07:15:00","date_gmt":"2007-06-19T05:15:00","guid":{"rendered":""},"modified":"2007-06-19T07:15:00","modified_gmt":"2007-06-19T05:15:00","slug":"soccer-on-the-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/325-soccer-on-the-box.html","title":{"rendered":"Soccer on the box"},"content":{"rendered":"

It’s not at all clear, though, that the controversial R1bn deal that the Premier Soccer League (PSL) has signed with SuperSport will be bad for soccer or for soccer fans. And it certainly raises some questions about whether our public broadcaster, the SABC, is doing its job. <\/font><\/p>\n

The deal has been greeted with general shock and horror from the government, in the person of Sport and Recreation Minister Makhenkesi Stofile, who said sport was a national asset that should be accessible to all, as well as from the South African Communist Party, which called the deal “insensitive” to the needs of millions of soccer-loving South Africans. <\/font><\/p>\n

The concern looks legitimate on the face of it: most South African soccer fans probably don’t earn enough to afford pay TV, so giving the broadcast rights to SuperSport appears to deprive them of their access to the game. But the PSL has been quick to emphasise that the deal could in fact increase everyone’s access to soccer significantly. In terms of the contract, SuperSport is obliged to sell at least 140 games a season to free-to-air broadcasters. <\/font><\/p>\n

That’s nearly double the 75 games — of a possible 275 — the SABC showed last season. So SuperSport will have to sell to e.tv or SABC or both, and though it will be able to cherry pick, no one should miss seeing any major matches and they may well see more minor ones. <\/font><\/p>\n

That assumes that the deal gets through the legal hoops of the dispute between the SABC and the PSL. Indeed, it’s because of the dispute that SuperSport won the rights — our public broadcaster didn’t even bid for them, and it is suing the PSL for negotiating in bad faith. It says, too, that it has pre-emptive rights to broadcast soccer matches. <\/font><\/p>\n

So there’s still some way to go before SuperSport is confirmed as the winner. But the SABC has hardly covered itself in glory. It had already lost the rights to broadcast cricket and rugby; now it may have lost soccer too. If the public broadcaster in a sports-crazy society such as SA can’t do sport properly, what can it do? <\/font><\/p>\n

It’s hardly SuperSport’s fault for taking advantage of the incompetence of the SABC, nor is it the PSL’s. Perhaps it is greedy to choose the R200m a year it will earn from SuperSport over the R67m it earned from the SABC. But the real question is what it does with the money, and whether it uses it to advance and enhance soccer. On that score, the fans must hold it to account.<\/font><\/p>\n

Comments<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

IT IS quite possible, even likely, that all sides have behaved badly in the dispute over which TV station should have the right to screen South African soccer matches.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-325","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telecoms"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=325"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/325\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=325"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=325"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=325"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}