LOVING THE LIVE GAME
SuperSport finds local soccer, women’s sport and wrestling are among the top drawcards for the channel. And with Indian Premier League broadcast rights now in the bag, viewers are set to score
The recent tussle between SuperSport and rights-holder Viacom18 over broadcasting rights in South Africa for the Indian Premier League (IPL) cricket tournament is an indication of the audience appeal of live sport on TV.
When SuperSport conceded last week that it had failed to obtain the IPL TV rights, you could sense a collective groan among viewers. Then relief came on March 31, less than three hours before the first match, when the broadcaster announced it had reached an agreement with Viacom18 to show all 74 games of the tournament.
Refusing to be drawn on how much it paid for the rights, Marc Jury, former CEO of SuperSport and new Multi Choice CEO, tells the FM how broadcasters bid for the rights of major tournaments, using the IPL as an example.
“[The Board of Control for Cricket in India] issued an invitation to tender last year as an expression of interest [from broadcasters],” he says. “As part of the expression of interest you then gained access to participate in an online auction for the rights.”
With its footprint across 52 SubSaharan African and Indian Ocean nations, SuperSport has since 2008 traditionally bid for the broadcasting rights for the region, says Jury.
“We were ultimately outbid for SubSaharan Africa by a company called Viacom18. They hold the rights for [streaming the IPL] in India,” Jury says. “Because they only operate in India, they then on-sold to a third-party operator called Zone, which is a sports streaming platform. Then Zone tried to sell it to us. It was just a case of a markup on a markup on a markup and it drives the price up to a ridiculous [level].”
It was this hollowing-out of the value proposition that persuaded SuperSport, at first, to withdraw from the bidding process. “Like anything in life, you work out the value of certain rights relative to the number of people, or subscribers, it impacts,” says Jury.
However, after announcing that the channel would not broadcast the IPL, the rights-holders became worried about the coverage of their product across Africa. That brought SuperSport back to the negotiating table, where it “secured the rights in a last-minute agreement”.
So, in addition to the IPL, which tournaments are the most popular in SuperSport’s offering?
When it comes to local viewers, South Africa’s Premier Soccer League (PSL) “shoots the lights out”, says Jury. “The derby [between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates] draws huge audiences.”
The second-biggest view-catcher, he says, is WWE wrestling.
And it’s not just men’s sports that attract viewers. Jury says SuperSport “sees women’s sport as a growth opportunity”. He backs this up with the strong support for the Women’s T20 World Cup in February. In addition, SuperSport will be broadcasting the Netball World Cup in Cape Town in July.
Also, the Proteas netball team has drawn sponsorships from Discovery, Telkom and Spar (a longtime backer of the national side). The Netball World
Cup sold naming rights for the event to Discovery’s Vitality unit.
The importance of sports broadcasting to SuperSport owner MultiChoice was indicated by its investment in decoders ahead of the Soccer World
Cup in Qatar last year. It bought decoders to avoid running out of stock with fans subscribing late — a distinct possibility, given that SuperSport holds the tournament’s broadcasting rights in all 52 markets in which it operates.
It seems, however, that the tournament wasn’t enough to offset the drag of South Africa’s ailing economy.
“Though the [Soccer World Cup] delivered subscriber numbers in line with expectations, the operating environment in South Africa has deteriorated beyond expectations over the past few months,” the company said ahead of its March year-end.
With power cuts and the damage to consumer spending — “and thus on the group’s customer mix ”— MultiChoice says revenue growth in the second half of the financial year is likely to be below expectations.
The group’s share price took an 18% knock after the announcement.
It’s not all bad news. Despite the country’s economic travails, Jury says young viewers — those between 18 and 30 — continue watching sport, “streaming it through mobile apps”.
And, despite a dearth of live sport during the pandemic, advertisers seem upbeat about TV audience numbers.
“In sport we’re seeing strong increases in on-screen advertising, particularly in live sport events,” says Jury.