What’s with the secrecy?

The Premier Soccer League this week finally announced SuperSport as the winner of its TV rights for the next five years.

It is commendable that after weeks of uncertainty, this matter has now been finalised.

For the past 10 years, SuperSport helped local football coverage with innovation and excellent content, following years of short-changing when the rights belonged to the public broadcaster.

But as the parties prepare to toast an extension of their relationship for another five years, we have certain concerns.

Chief among these is that unlike the previous two deals, which were worth R1.6-billion and R2.2billion, we have not heard a thing about the value of the justconcluded contract.

It is concerning that the PSL instead issued a terse statement, without giving details pertaining to the latest deal. We first saw this strange behaviour earlier this year when the PSL and league sponsors Absa renewed their partnership. Then, the value of the sponsorship was not announced. What’s there to hide?

We call on the PSL to be transparent in the interest of clean governance and tell us how much SuperSport paid to outbid others.

Also, we have noted how through the SuperSport-PSL deal, majority of football fans are at times excluded from viewing the most supported teams in the country.

A situation where games involving Chiefs, Sundowns and Pirates are shown exclusively on SuperSport, while the SABC gets crumbs, has to be relooked when the broadcasters re-negotiate for sub-licencing.

It cannot be sustainable.