MARKETING AFRICA MAL 18/17 mal 18:17 online | Page 94

on the East African expansion.
The continued disagreements from
sporting federations on who gets
the share of the sponsorship monies
would be another reason for the slow
uptake of live sports coverage.
Other external factors that may
have dealt the closure of SuperSport
in Kenya would have been the
slowing down in pay TV hardware
(read decoders) uptake. For the last
1 ½ years, the mother company
MultiChoice has maintained the
charges on the devices as well as
monthly charges at the same levels
in a bid to stop the attrition and
reduced demand of the services. This
still doesn’t seem to have enticed the
existing and dropped audiences.
Another major factor was the
lukewarm response from corporate
firms which were believed would
come in droves to advertise in the
SuperSport’s channels. Save for
the occasional Tusker (EABL -
Diageo), Kenya Airways, Barclays
or Safaricom, most of the local and
regional firms gave ad spots on
the channels wide berth. Was it a
question of over-priced rate cards or
simply not finding the commercial
sense in using such platforms? Who
knows?
Another factor could be the increase
in triple-play solutions – Internet
data, voice and video streaming
with the latter growing in the
urbanized areas. This is largely to
fibre-cable connectivity by the telcos
and internet companies. Though
sports streaming is not yet as widely
available in this part of the world, it
does impact the audiences targeted
by pay TV companies.
‘‘ Another major
factor was the
lukewarm response
from corporate firms
which were believed
would come in
droves to advertise
in the SuperSport’s
channels. Save for the
occasional Tusker,
KQ, Barclays or
Safaricom, most of
the local and regional
firms gave ad spots
on the channels
wide berth. Was it
a question of over-
priced rate cards or
simply not finding the
commercial sense in
using such platforms?
Who knows?’’
Interestingly one of the FTA
carriers, GoTV is a sister company
to SuperSport in the larger
MultiChoice family. It remains one
of the bigger pay TV companies in
Kenya and Uganda though is still
lagging behind in Tanzania.
Mid-May created a buzz of what
Naspers is considering doing with
The expansion of FTA – Free-To-
MultiChoice in the rest of Sub-
Air channels has also seen some
Saharan Africa. Press reports and
depressed numbers for the premium media experts are opining a sale of
pay TV channels. ‘Free-To-Air’ here MultiChoice to the Pan-African
is used modestly as there is still a
telco MTN in what could be a
monthly charge based on the number game-changer within the Sub-
of channels one wishes to watch.
Saharan sub-continent.
92 MAL 18/17 ISSUE
Reasons attributed to the sale
include sluggish economic
expansion in key markets (including
Kenya) and audiences preferring
cheaper online alternatives to their
viewership needs. Other reasons
are the fluctuating exchange rates
in each of the markets which tend
to eat into earnings or force the
company to raise subscription fees to
match South African rates.
The broadcaster still reigns supreme
with the rights to screening major
football leagues including the prized
English Premier League for which
they signed a renewed deal for
another 2-3 seasons.
While the intended sale of
MultiChoice is still in the works,
we’ll not deal the death knell
on sports broadcasting from the
Naspers-owned SuperSport in this
part of the world just yet.
Enter the Dragon – Kwese Sports
Interestingly, while one sports
broadcaster is struggling, another
Pan-African based-one has been
expanding stealthily and is slowly
entering the mainstream. After
signing major deals with the NBA,
NHL and F1 as well as FTA rights
with the EPL in the last 18 months,
Kwese Sports is emerging as Pan-
Africa’s next sports broadcasting
frontier.
Choosing the FTA platform, it has
expanded its regional footprint to
include countries in Southern and
Eastern Africa before expanding to
West Africa. Securing the rights to
screen some of the NHL and NBA
games from SuperSport was seen as
a real coup.
Kwese Sports owned by Zimbabwe’s
Econet mobile telco associated with
the fairly modest magnate Steve
Masiyiwa is slowly making in-roads
where other sports broadcasters are
struggling in Africa. It is currently