Modern Athlete Magazine Issue 120, July 2019 | Page 31

SPORT MAN
Says
By
Manfred Seidler
Where to from Here for Athletics Broadcasting?
In a previous column I wrote about how the broadcasting rights in South African sport work, in particular in athletics.
Recent events have prompted this follow-up column.
to operate. Similarly, the SABC pays ASA broadcast
rights fees, which ASA uses to help run the sport,
send teams abroad, facilitate coaching courses, etc.
So while that court case goes on between
MultiChoice and ICASA, the pay channel will not
be considering acquiring any other properties for
broadcast. In the past, SuperSport’s lack of interest in
the rights to athletics was not too much of an issue,
despite many people complaining on social media
how poor the coverage of athletics on SABC is, and
that SuperSport would do a much better job of it.
(For more on that, please read my column in the May
edition of Modern Athlete). Now, however, it gets
tricky for ASA.
The Fall of the SABC
years at a time. However, it has now become way
tougher, as the broadcasting landscape has changed
dramatically, and this will have an impact on athletics
broadcast rights, amongst other sporting codes.
Broadcasting Rights Under Fire
L
et’s start with a quick recap of the basic picture.
In principle, Athletics South Africa (ASA)
owns all broadcasting rights (including digital
rights) to the sport of athletics in South Africa. That
means that ASA is the sole body that can negotiate
a broadcast deal of any kind for the sport, with any
broadcaster. This includes livestream and YouTube
videos of events. In the past, ASA sold these rights to
the public broadcaster, the SABC, usually for several
Recently, the Independent Communications Authority
of South Africa (ICASA) basically told pay channel
broadcaster MultiChoice (read SuperSport) that it will
no longer have a ‘monopoly’ on broadcasting ‘sport
of national interest.’ This is because SuperSport
has paid for the broadcast rights of several sporting
codes, or specific leagues or teams within those
codes, and then broadcasts it to a smaller, limited
audience that subscribes to its service, meaning that
a large proportion of the South African public is not
able to watch this sport. MultiChoice has, of course,
challenged this in court, and at the time of writing, this
was still an ongoing case.
Several sporting codes, such as soccer, rugby and
cricket, will stand to lose out if ICASA gets its way,
as SuperSport pays them millions in broadcast
rights fees, and these fees pay for the federations
It is no secret that the SABC is under severe financial
strain, and in a recent article on the My Broadband
website, the SABC (not for the first time) said that
they were potentially facing a blackout. Of course, this
has severe ramifications for ASA, as the federation
recently signed a once-off limited deal for 2019
coverage of events by the SABC, whereby the public
broadcaster bought the broadcast rights to the
Comrades Marathon, Cape Town Marathon and the
Soweto Marathon, with other events under discussion
to potentially be included in a bigger three-year
deal that was to be discussed from 2020 onwards.
What happens now if the SABC does indeed have
a blackout? How will this affect the Cape Town and
Soweto Marathons?
It is not known whether the SABC has actually paid
ASA the rights fee yet, or even a portion of it, but if the
SABC has in fact paid ASA, and the broadcaster does
have a blackout, where then do broadcasts go to?
Can ASA go to other broadcasters? In principle, that
surely wouldn’t be a problem, since the SABC would
have no platform on which to exercise their rights.
However, this raises other questions. Would ASA
first have to reimburse the money paid by the SABC
if they were to take the broadcast rights to another
broadcaster? I don’t think that would be the case, but
I am no legal expert.
What I do know, though, is that should the public
broadcaster not be able to honour its obligations, and
ASA does look elsewhere, the federation would only
be able to go to either eTv or SuperSport. However,
we already know that SuperSport will not be engaging
in any deals at this time. That leaves eTV, which has
shown little to no interest in obtaining broadcast
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