South Africa’s ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), has launched a new proposal to implement widespread changes around TV broadcasting regulations in the country with a focus on the broadcasting of sports.
One major thing in the proposal is the ban on selling exclusive broadcasting rights for sports matches with emphasis on matches involving South African national teams.
“As the ANC we are saying, let’s have a discussion to ensure that especially sports of national interests are watched by all South Africans,” said Nkenke Kekana, the head of the ANC sub-committee on communications.
“So where you have competing rights and interests we are encouraging dialogue. It cannot be that the size of the purse determines the rights of the people,” Kekana continued.
If this proposal goes into effect, Multichoice, which offers its DSTV service with its exclusive rights like the English Premier League, might be affected. DSTV could have some competition from the likes of Amazon which has recently been acquiring rights to sports events like the English Premier League.
Past competitors like Kwesé TV could not get access to English Premier League games for its subscribers because DSTV scooped up exclusive rights which we speculated led to the downfall of the service.
If the ANC’s proposal is successful, could competitors like Amazon compete in South Africa, and would other African countries look at exclusive rights as well?
We’ll have to wait and see.
Source: IT News Africa
