Johannesburg- Wednesday 22 August 2018 – The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) yesterday announced that SABC Sport has acquired the Free To Air (FTA) broadcast rights for the English Premier League. The rights will enable the SABC to broadcast the FTA matches on SABC 3 every Saturday afternoon at 16h00, local time. The rights have been sublicensed from the main rights holder, Kwese Sport for a duration of one season.
Due to commercially sensitive information, the SABC cannot divulge the figures of the deal however the cost to the SABC is minimal compared to its investment into other local sporting codes.
SABC 3 is a channel which is well known for providing a mix of local and international content to its viewers. The acquisition of the English Premier League sports rights is a strategic decision to further diversify the channel’s content offering, as well as regain viewers. The acquisition of these sports rights are also in line with the re-positioning of SABC 3.
The FTA rights package consists of 33 live matches per season selected by the English Premier League. These matches feature the best teams in this league.
Given the SABC’s current funding model, the corporation has to find commercially viable products to invest in, in order to realize returns which it will re-invest into its public service mandate content. The low investment into the English Premier League will allow a greater return on investment which will go some way into SABC being able to meet its non-financial viable investments, particularly sports of national interest and News.
Increasing its revenue base is one method of the SABC remedying its cashflow challenges. Furthermore, the SABC is negotiating favourable payment terms like it did with the English Premier League, with its other critical football rights holders like SuperSport and SAFA.
The SABC continues to bring the Premier Soccer League (PSL) to viewers on SABC 1.
