Pay-TV is getting the knocks even in home country SA

DSTV is currently being given some competition particularly with the government backed TSTV in Nigeria. Zimbabwean owned Kwese TV has also set up shop in Nigeria.

DSTV’s Super Sports channels in South Africa,have a running monopoly on key sports rights like the Premier Soccer League (PSL), the English Premier League (EPL), the Springboks and Super Rugby matches and cricket – Proteas and the local tournaments.

Launched in 1995, DSTV has built a steady and strong relationship with sports rights owners and strikes long term exclusive contracts with them.

On Tuesday, October 3, 2017, the Congress of South African Trade Unions announced plans to protest the monopoly of DSTV over national rugby broadcasting rights in the country, and the lack of freely accessible games broadcast by the SABC (The South African Broadcasting Corporation).

The South African Broadcasting Corporation is the state broadcaster in South Africa, and provides 19 radio stations as well as 5 television broadcasts to the general public. It’s owned by the government of South Africa.

They were to have the protest staged outside the venue of a Rugby championship between South Africa and New Zealand in Capetown on Saturday October 7, 2017.

The union sees football and other sports like Rugby and Cricket as a symbol of national unity and therefore believes they should be aired on national TV.

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“National sports that must inspire the whole nation must be shown live on SABC, as it is a national sport of all the people.”

“This kind of discrimination will never be allowed in a national soccer match, as the government would step in to ensure it is available live for all citizens.

“This sport has been denied the majority of children in schools because of (the South African Rugby Union) SARU’s bad development programmes and the ministry allows them to get away with it.”

In 2007, the SABC lost its exclusive rights to the local Premier Soccer League (PSL) to SuperSport, in a deal worth R1.6 billion. The deal stipulated that some matches had to be shared with the SABC. In August 2011, SuperSport renewed its contract with the PSL for another five years.

The Premier Soccer League (PSL) is a national sports association responsible for administering the two professional football leagues in South Africa - the South African Premier Division and National First Division.

The company acts as a governing body and competition organiser. The PSL are affiliated to the South African Football Association but SAFA do not govern the PSL competitions.

Back in August, the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) announced that it would be starting an inquiry into subscription-based television broadcasting services.

Some issues it intended to look into include:

Shortening exclusive contracts – meaning sports can no longer be tied down to SuperSport through contractual obligations for long periods of time.

“Unbundling” sports rights so that they are accessible to more than one buyer.

Similar to the unbundling sports rights, Icasa proposes that a rights owner split their content rights and sell them to more than one broadcaster.

Similar to the case of Sky in the UK, Icasa proposes introducing a wholesale-must-offer on sports channels, which requires an operator to sell sporting content to other distributors at regulated prices.

Internet powered companies like Facebook are also looking at buying rights to stream EPL matches, which would further lessen DSTV’s stronghold.

The general consensus now is that there is a serious push and backing for premium content rights to no longer be monopolized by one party.

The new pay-TV entrants Kwese TV and TSTV into the African market are already working towards changing that status quo as we know it.