by Thinus Ferreira
The South African public broadcaster won't show South Africa's national cricket team compete at the ongoing T20 World Cup, and is slamming the pay-TV operator MultiChoice and an "exploitative" SuperSport for allegedly once again wanting to sub-sell the rights with what the SABC calls unreasonable, unfair and anti-competitive conditions.
SuperSport once again demanded that the SABC would not be able to show the T20 World Cup on its digital terrestrial feed of its SABC1, SABC2 or SABC3 TV channels carried on eMedia Holdings' Openview satellite TV service, or on the streaming version of SABC1, SABC2 or SABC3 carried on Telkom's TelkomONE video streaming service where the content must be blacked out.
MultiChoice sees Openview and TelkomONE as direct rivals with SuperSport that was only willing to let the SABC show the T20 World Cup on the analogue terrestrial versions of the SABC's TV channels.
South African viewers therefore can only watch the T20 World Cup and the Proteas playing as DStv subscribers since the SABC doesn't have the rights and didn't want to acquire it from SuperSport for its SABC Sport channel.
The Proteas will play against Sri Lanka in Sharjah on this coming Saturday and against Bangladesh in Abu Dhabi on Tuesday in their next two matches. They then return to Sharjah to conclude their pool stage of the T20 World Cup against England on 2 November.
"Unfortunately the SABC does not have TV rights to this tournament," says Gugu Ntuli, SABC group executive for corporate affairs and marketing.
"The rights were not made available to the public broadcaster by the rights holders. All the rights were sold by right holders, including the free-to-air rights, to SuperSport, a pay-TV service."
Gugu Ntuli said the SABC refused to accept the conditions of SuperSport's sub-licensing deal.
"The public broadcaster rejected them as the SABC would not then be able to broadcast the matches on its sports channel or on SABC 1, SABC2 and SABC3 via Openview or TelkomONE."
"The SABC believes the conditions imposed upon it are unreasonable, unfair and anti-competitive and therefore could not be accepted."
"The SABC would love to show these matches on its TV platforms, but this is not possible due to the reasons mentioned above."
"The SABC refuses to allow SuperSport to exploit its dominant financial position in the sports right market and disregard not just the SABC but also millions of South African sports fans in this manner. The SABC is calling on Icasa to address this inherent unfairness by cracking down on total exclusivity and decoupling free-to-air rights from pay TV acquisition."
MultiChoice says that "the proposal offers the SABC the rights to broadcast these matches on SABC1, SABC2 and SABC3. It follows the same terms and conditions as previous sub-licensing agreements between MultiChoice and the SABC.
"Unfortunately, the SABC has decided to reject this offer, which will result in its audiences being unable to view these fixtures."
MultiChoice says that the Randburg-based pay-TV operator "does not believe a term of the offer precluding SABC making the content available to third-party competitors with whom it has concluded commercial arrangements, is anti-competitive."
"The offer to the SABC is fully compliant with the Sport Broadcasting Services Regulations issued by the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa)."
