By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC), and South African Football Association (SAFA) have announced a four-year extension of their partnership on Thursday.
The announcement was made at the SABC’s headquarters in Auckland Park.
SABC group CEO Nomsa Chabeli, “It’s my great honour to announce that SAFA and SABC have renewed their partnership.”
Chabeli said the figurers were less important as the agreement they have with Safa goes way beyond that, especially given the reach the public broadcaster offers in terms of its huge viewing numbers.
“From the SABC perspective we don’t discuss the contents of our contracts. That’s important because they’re confidential,” she said.
“What broadcasts do is help attract and maintain the commercial ecosystem. I think what often gets ignored when we start looking at how much the SABC is offering, is what the SABC is giving in terms of the opportunity for them [Safa] to commercialise [their products] across their entire football offering.
“We’re bringing in the audiences and once you bring in audiences you’re bringing in other sponsors. Safa is then able to package a proposition and be able to go on and sell it to commercial sponsors who are looking for rights and opportunities to leverage their presence, and to target their audiences the SABC is bringing to this.”
Chabedi said the SABC has an audience of more than 26.6-million daily viewers and listeners. “There’s no other media owner in this country that offers that.
The Safa-SABC broadcast deal includes matches of all national teams — Bafana Bafana, Banyana Banyana and the junior national squads. This is in addition to Safa’s national women’s Hollywoodbets Super League.
Safa president Danny Jordaan said, “SABC has been there for our first game after readmission, when Doctor Khumalo scored in a 1-0 victory over Cameroon. They’ve been with us when we hosted the 1996 AFCON and the 2010 FIFA World Cup. And we’re happy to continue our partnership.”
“What is important is the value add [of the broadcast deal] is bought by sponsors. If your matches have no broadcast, your value of those matches and your properties are in a lesser value than when it is exposed on national television, “Jordaan said.
“That is the important thing. So I’ll calculate that and then come back to you [with the figures of the deal]. But as you can see it’s a complicated calculation, but ultimately we have to bring figures.”
Earlier in the week, the football association announced the return of Advocate Tebogo Motlanthe to take up the vacant position of COO.