People’s race not on TV as rights bickering persists
SuperSport, ASA point fingers at Marathon Trust
The Soweto Marathon may not be on TV on Sunday as stakeholders are apparently not on the same page regarding exactly who has the rights to showcase the event.
Soweto Marathon Trust (SMT) chair Sello Khunou is confident an agreement to have the famous kasi marathon televised will be reached before the end week.
“On broadcasting, we are still having discussions up to this late stage,” said Khunou.
“The race is on Sunday, I’m sure we will reach some conclusion sometime this week.”
Earlier in the year Athletics SA (ASA) penned a deal with commercial broadcaster SuperSport to broadcast all their events, including the People’s Race.
But SuperSport CEO Marc Jury said they did not have the rights to broadcast the Soweto Marathon, adding the SMT and ASA are at loggerheads over the distribution of the broadcasting rights.
“Unfortunately at the moment, the dispute sits between ASA and the Soweto Marathon. When we acquired the rights from ASA our impression was that we had the rights to the Soweto Marathon,” Jury told Sowetan.
“The Soweto Marathon organisers have, however, said they control their own media rights to their events, not ASA, so ASA had no right to sell those to us.
“The dispute between ASA and SMT needs to be sorted first before any discussion around broadcasting is going to happen. Unfortunately currently we don’t have rights to that event according to the event’s organiser, so we won’t be broadcasting it,” he said.
Approached for comment, ASA referred Sowetan to the Central Gauteng Athletics (CGA), which houses the Soweto Marathon.
CGA president Steven Khanyile said the issue between ASA and the trust is that the trust wants to sell the rights independently.
“I know there is an issue with ASA and SMT. SMT was saying SuperSport can broadcast the event after they have been given something to offset some of the costs they incurred because they don’t have a sponsor,” said Khanyile.
“This issue is very serious; ASA has a contract with SuperSport. As a province we believe that a race of this magnitude cannot go unnoticed by it not being broadcasted.”.
Meanwhile, the SABC stated last week it wouldn’t broadcast the event – expected to attract 20,000 people – as it had no rights to it.