by Thinus Ferreira
The South African public broadcaster won't be broadcasting any of the matches of the rugby test series between South Africa and the British Lions on the SABC in an ongoing tiff behind the scenes with SuperSport regarding a deadlock in negotiations over carriage terms on the SABC's new digital channels.
The South African public broadcaster has remained silent without any press statement to its viewers about whether it would - or wouldn't - show the South African and England rugby test kicking off on Saturday evening at 18:00. The British Lions only visits South Africa every 12 years.
MultiChoice's SuperSport holds the pay-TV rights for South Africa for all Springbok matches but has been willing to sub-license the rights for free-to-air carriage to the SABC - but not for its new digital terrestrial SABC Sport channel that is available on eMedia Investments' Openview free-to-air satellite service.
SuperSport also demands blackout clauses in any sub-licensing contract for the "digital versions" of SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3, carried on video streaming services like TelkomONE, in cases where the South Africa's public broadcaster is to carry any sub-licensed SuperSport content on those channels.
The result is that those SABC viewers on services like TelkomONE and Openview get a black screen, similar to this past weekend for the Confederation of African Football (CAF) Champions League final between Kaizer Chiefs and Egypt's Al Ahly.
After intervention by South Africa's minister of communications and digital technologies, and the minister of sports, arts and culture, MultiChoice and SuperSport sub-licensed the CAF final match free-to-air rights to the SABC that showed it on SABC1.
However, SABC viewers could only see it on the analogue and digital terrestrial television (DTT) version of SABC1 - not the "digital satellite SABC1"-version on Openview or the "digital streaming SABC1"- version on TelkomONE, something that the SABC failed to warn or inform viewers about beforehand.
Earlier this week, Gary Rathbone, SABC Sport boss, told News24 that the SABC won't broadcast the Springbok Test series against the British and Irish Lions since SuperSport doesn't want it shown on SABC Sport or any of the SABC's digital channel versions.
In a second clause, SuperSport also want a delayed broadcast, meaning that the SABC would only be able to start showing a match from after the final whistle of a match was broadcast live on SuperSport.
