Newly appointed communications minister Solly Malatsi and his counterpart in the sports, arts & culture ministry, Gayton McKenzie, will meet with MultiChoice Group, eMedia and the SABC this week to resolve a continuing feud over sports rights.

Malatsi said this in his first address to parliament on Monday on the occasion of the department of communications & digital technologies’ budget vote in parliament.

In the latest iteration of the battle between the broadcasters, the SABC backed out of a deal with main rightsholder SuperSport – a subsidiary of MultiChoice Group – that led to the national broadcaster no longer airing the Irish test series between the Springboks and Ireland on 6 and 13 July.

The SABC initially blamed litigation by eMedia as its reason for backtracking on the deal. eMedia filed an urgent application with the competition appeal court to enforce an April ruling by the Competition Tribunal that interdicted the SABC from entering into sublicensing agreements with MultiChoice – or any of its subsidiaries – that limit the public broadcaster from airing sports matches on its own channels distributed via eMedia’s free-to-air Openview satellite platform.

The Competition Tribunal’s April ruling followed October 2023 litigation by eMedia, which came after a similar dispute over Rugby World Cup sublicensing rights.

In a statement last week, South African Rugby Union president Mark Alexander expressed support for the SABC’s decision to back out of the deal with SuperSport.

‘No advertising revenue’

“To be clear, this is not a conflict between SuperSport and the SABC – they had a contract in place to broadcast the matches based on appropriate commercial terms. It was the intervention of eMedia and its demand that Openview be permitted to broadcast the rugby without any financial contribution by eMedia that put an end to this agreement,” said Alexander.

SABC spokeswoman Mmoni Seapolelo told TechCentral in response to a query that the urgent litigation by eMedia at the competition appeal court over the broadcast rights to the test matches necessitated the public broadcaster to review its decision to continue with the sublicensing agreement concluded with SuperSport. “It must be noted that the SABC will not use public funds to finance private third parties for sports rights,” Seapolelo said in a clear dig at eMedia and Openview.

A Friday statement by eMedia rebutted the views shared by Alexander and Seapolelo, criticising the SABC for going against its agreement to distribute its feed “as is” to its own channels on Openview.

“In 2021, the SABC voluntarily, and in its own interest, entered into a distribution and carriage agreement with eMedia to broadcast the SABC’s channels on eMedia’s Openview platform to a significant proportion of its (the SABC’s) viewers who watch its channels on the platform. To be clear, eMedia and Openview derive no advertising revenue from the SABC channels being distributed on the Openview platform,” eMedia said in the statement.

eMedia also criticised the SABC’s sudden change in tone on the matter of sublicensing rights, especially given that the public broadcaster last year filed an affidavit with the Competition Commission, declaring MultiChoice’s conduct in sublicensing negotiations as “anti-competitive”, eMedia said.

“We will convene a meeting with the minister of sports – with the SABC, eMedia and MultiChoice – this week to explore ways to resolve the impasse around sports broadcasting rights in this country,” Malatsi told parliament on Monday. – © 2024 NewsCentral Media