SABC prevented from showing Springbok games on free satellite and streaming
SA Rugby should be worried about dwindling free access
The recent dispute over free-to-air rights for the Springbok games against Ireland has led SA Rugby to suggest that the SABC is satisfied with being confined to terrestrial platforms, placing the blame for the deadlock squarely on eMedia.
Quoted in Daily Maverick, SA Rugby president, Mark Alexander, states: “To be clear, this is not a conflict between SuperSport (MultiChoice) and the SABC — they had a contract in place to broadcast the matches based on appropriate commercial terms. It was the intervention of eMedia and its demand that [their Openview platform] be permitted to broadcast the rugby, without any financial contribution by eMedia, that put an end to this agreement."
I would like to explore these comments further and pose some follow-up questions.
Firstly, Mr Alexander is wrong to suggest that there is no “conflict between SABC and SuperSport” after the public broadcaster lodged a complaint against Supersport at the Competition Commission in 20221. With this context, it is highly unlikely that the SABC was content with excluding three million households from watching delayed Springbok games for free on SABC channels via OpenView or its own SABC Plus app. It is reasonable to speculate that the SABC felt compelled to accept these restrictive conditions due to the public and political backlash it would face, and is currently facing, for not fulfilling its mandate to provide access to national sporting events.
Secondly, the SABC suffers significant reputational damage whenever a game is advertised to air on SABC 1 or SABC 2, but viewers of these channels on OpenView and SABC Plus receive a different sports match instead. Viewers then think SABC has misled them about acquiring the rights, directing their frustration at the public broadcaster rather than the sports body or sub-licensor. If a game is advertised to be on SABC 2, viewers have every right to expect it to air on SABC 2, regardless of the platform carrying the channel.
Lastly, if the SABC must pay more for the rights to show delayed Springbok games on SABC channels available via OpenView and SABC Plus, then the sub-licensor should explicitly state this. However, that is not the situation here. The SABC is only being offered rights for their channels on terrestrial platforms, limiting the public broadcaster’s ability to properly monetise these sports rights and depriving access for millions of South Africans
“After the Analogue Switch-Off” - Image generated by DALL-E, an AI image generation tool from OpenAI
After the analogue transmitter switch-off (ASO) on December 31, 2024, it is predicted that the SABC could lose over four million free-to-air households. Consequently, similar platform restrictions would limit the SABC’s broadcasts of Springbok games to at most one million free-to-air TV households on the struggling DTT network, the smallest platform in terms of reach. With a current total of 16.5 million TV and streaming households in South Africa, only a small percentage will have the option to watch the Springboks for free in five months time.
Millions of young children who could be inspired by the likes of Siya Kolisi, Ox Nche, Bongi Mbonambi or Kurt-Lee Arendse will no longer have the opportunity to see them play in the green and gold. Is this really what SA Rugby wants? Because that is the direction we are heading.
Disclosure: I am a former SABC Board member (2017-2022) and was on the SABC Board when this complaint was lodged against Supersport in 2022. However, the views expressed in this opinion piece are solely my own.