Newly licensed pay-television operator Siyaya TV, which hopes to offer consumers a low-cost bouquet using digital terrestrial television transmission, has reportedly secured a R1bn broadcast deal for the rights to broadcast Bafana Bafana football games.

According to the City Press newspaper, the deal gives Siyaya the rights to all Bafana Bafana and Banyana Banyana matches. As it did in previous rights deals for local football, the Siyaya transaction has left the SABC out of the loop, the newspaper says. The SABC will have to buy rebroadcasting rights from Siyaya to show Bafana games. The deal is effective from 1 May 2015.

City Press says Siyaya expects to go live with its broadcasts next June. Siyaya is one of a number of new licensees that hope to take advantage of communications regulator Icasa’s plans to open up the airwaves to more competition once the country switches over to digital transmission of television broadcasts.

The 100% black-owned Siyaya’s main shareholder is the Bakgatla Ba Kgafela tribe in North West. It wants to offer local content, with a strong focus on football, for a monthly subscription fee starting at just R70/month, it told Icasa during the licence hearing process.

Soccer will be a key component of Siyaya’s offering, along with an extensive library of video-on-demand content and facilities for storing 100 hours of content on a personal video recorder, it told Icasa. It intends targeting black South Africans with an average age of 30 and a monthly household income of between R4 000 and R10 000, a potential market of a million viewers, it said. — © 2014 NewsCentral Media