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London — For years, Africa’s sports programming has been dominated by football in general and in particular the English Premier League. In South Africa, cricket and rugby are also key to the mix. When sports programming veteran Gary Rathbone joined SABC to head up their sports strategy it was always going to be interesting. Russell Southwood spoke to him this week about what has been achieved so far.
Rathbone was bought into SABC as part of its turnaround strategy. After a decade of political appointments at a senior level, it was in a financial mess. This had hit its ability to acquire and show sports. Now it has three top directors all of whom have come from private sector and know how to run a business.
“When I joined (they said) you’ve got to turn sports around. We’d prefer a “free-to-air’ proposition but you’re coming into a situation where you don’t have any budget… I said OK and I have had tremendous support from people at the top. I’ve had the backing to push the ideas I wanted. When I joined we were acquiring 3-4 sports rights a year. So far this year, we’ve acquired 45 new properties.”
In addition to the sports described below, these have included cricket, motor sport, fight sports, athletics, tennis, hockey, netball and a range of womens’ sports. Rathbone believes that far more women watch sport than is commonly understood.
His first task was to make sports work across the SABC’s three channels, 1,2 and 3 and not just let it get “shoe-horned into the gaps. We have to create business plans for each property acquired and I’ve had to cut my cloth accordingly.” Outside of broadcast channels, it started to put sports content on Telkom’s streaming platform TelkomOne: “It’s free for users but it’s still in the build-up stage.”
The heart of the new sports strategy was a free-to-air sports channel currently on DTT boxes (around 1.5 million viewers) and the OpenView HD platform (2.5 million viewers). By comparison, the audience universe for analogue channels is about 35 million. The channel was launched in May but it has not yet done a full marketing campaign.
Effectively, it’s a niche channel within niche channels but one with already larger audience figures than other offers without marketing. But niche rather understates what SABC can do. It has three existing FTA channels on which the new channel can be advertised alongside its existing sports content and also 19 radio stations, 11 of which are vernacular language stations. It has already built up regular audiences and continues to grow.
That’s a structural overview of the sports programming but what is actually bringing the audiences in?: “The Bundesliga gave us an FTA package at a rate we can work with. It gave ne great flexibility on which games I could schedule and we can choose the bigger games after 6pm. No-one else in South Africa has access to then.”
It chose to start by putting these games on SABC 3: “We started driving engagement with audiences and we’re getting 2-3 times the audiences that Supersports is getting for the EPL. It’s a property I can take to sponsors and build on it.” On SABC 1, its premium channel, these matches have been getting 1.5 million viewers a game: “We now have a second game from the Bundesliga that goes on the sports channel and we drive audiences from SABC’s established channels to it.”
With rugby, where Supersports is very dominant, it has bought the Top 14, a French rugby league that is one of the biggest in Europe. It also has many Springbok players who have gone to it. This has been programmed on SABC 2 where the key rugby audiences sit. It then added a deal with amateur club rugby that has a 1000 local clubs.
“The Heritage Cup is the biggest single tournament in the world and we’re going to turn it into a property. We’re the national broadcaster so we want to do things that have never been touched by television. It’s a roots thing and it’s about the players who will be playing professionally in the future.”
It is building its own app and it sees this as part of a strategy of ‘future-proofing’ its offer: “Whatever we do has got to be a good thing for 2025. We’re building in sports news, information, results, analytics, tables and fixtures. You will be able to have online mobile content through the app.”
In Brief
France 24 is now available in Nigeria on GLO-TV, a streaming service launched by Globalcom, the country’s second-largest telephone network operator. Through this new OTT service, GLO-TV provides its 55 million subscribers with direct access to France 24 in English as well as an extensive catalogue of on-demand programs.
Canal+ and the African Union of Broadcasting (AUB) recently met in Dakar to explore the issue of television signal piracy to intellectual property rights as the Africa Cup of Nations (AFCON) approaches. Technical and legal measures were put in place during the meeting, led by AUB CEO Grégoire Ndjaka, to secure the signal of African channels, as governments invest substantial amounts of money in obtaining these rights. In addition, television rights holders need to defend the issue of broadcasting rights, as television stations rely on the advertising industry to stay afloat during major competitions.
Namibia: THE NBC does not have the required operational budget for this financial year, said spokesperson Umbi Karuaihe-Upi. Karuaihe-Upi in a press statement on Friday explained that the Namibian Broadcasting Corporation requires a total operational budget of N$386 million per year, consisting of its own generated revenue and subsidy allocation from the government. The government cut the broadcaster’s annual budget by half in March. The NBC was allocated a subsidy of N$127,5 million for the current financial year, however, the corporation expends an amount of N$32,2 million per month on operations.”We would like to categorically make it clear that the corporation never overspent their annual budget, but it is rather a matter of not having the required operational budget for the 2021/22 financial year,” she said.
Some impressive insights Cartoon Network’s multi-territory survey* reveal that 94% of South African kids are concerned about climate change, 95% would like to do more to fight climate change, while 90% are eager to learn more about climate change. Given these insights, it comes as no surprise that the number of challenges accepted by African kids on the Cartoon Network Climate Champions platform has exceeded the 100 000 mark.
Ghana: Professor Amin Alhassan, the Director-General of the Ghana Broadcasting Corporation (GBC), is encouraging the government to implement a media tax to replace the current “struggling” TV licence fee. For years, the GBC has struggled to collect TV license fees due to what it has described as Ghanaians’ unwillingness to pay what is owed to the state broadcaster. Professor Amin Alhassan, speaking at a media forum organised by the Ministry of Parliamentary Affairs in Accra, said that the discourse on establishing a media tax must start now for a successful public service broadcast.
The African Games multi-sport event’s global media and sponsorship rights have been awarded to the Sportfive agency for the next two editions. The Association of National Olympic Committees of Africa (ANOCA) has given Sportfive the contract, covering the 2023 Games awarded to Accra, Ghana in October 2018, and the 2027 tournament, which has yet to be allocated a host. Sportfive will distribute all global media rights, domestic, sponsorship rights, excluding domestic free-to-air rights, as the sole media and marketing rights partner. Sportfive will also provide strategic assistance, event planning, production services, and operational expertise to support the technical delivery of the African Games.
MultiChoice confirmed that the pay-TV service and M-Net are reviving Big Brother Mzansi after seven years for another South African season.
Seychelles: Defamation is no longer a crime under the Seychelles Penal Code after the National Assembly passed an amendment to remove it on Wednesday.
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