By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The South African Football Association (Safa) is feeling aggrieved about the poor revenue it has earned from its broadcast deal with the South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC).
Safa CEO Tebogo Motlanthe said the association reported a R2.9m loss for 2022 at its ordinary congress in Kempton Park on Sunday.
Safa was paid R25m a year in its four-year broadcast deal for national teams and junior competitions with the SABC from October 2019. The deal ends in September. The association is unhappy that, under pressure to ensure free-to-air coverage, Safa accepted that the cash-strapped public broadcaster negotiated down from the R110m a year in its previous deal.
Those irregularities have backed Safa into a corner in terms of the day-to-day operations — Safa said they will meet with the SABC to map a way forward — even though they are yet to decide on renewing their relationship.
While the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) has encouraged SA’s international teams to be on free-to-air services, Safa says they want to benefit from their relationship with the SABC.
“Of course, there are laws of the country, and you have Icasa that says you must be on free-to-air,” Motlanthe said.
“But going forward we need to unpack it. We need to say if we have someone who can give us money for live-streaming, we need to go to that person.
If there is a pay channel interested in one of our properties, we should be able to sell that to them.
“We are not saying we are serving divorce papers to the national broadcaster, but we are saying, ‘national broadcaster, also be reasonable’.
Meanwhile the PSL announced last Thursday it would not attend the congress and the preceding two-day workshop/indaba on Friday and Saturday.
We understand that PSL were not in favour of what was going to put forward by SAFA as proposals to the league, mainly the coaching qualification of CAF A Licence to coach in the DStv Premiership and also CAF B licence coaching in the Motsepe Foundation Championship.
SAFA has not had CAF A and B coaching courses in the country since 2018, though CAF has localized to member associations to come with their design and then seek guidance from the African football mother body.
The PSL, according to the sources, was also left annoyed by Motlanthe’s proposal of reducing the age group of the DStv Diski Challenge to be the U19, not U23 as it is now.
The issue (of the PSL pulling out) just came at the eleventh hour. Motlanthe said, he will write seeking a response from them as a member of Safa.
The PSL, in seeking to resolve the matter, said they will seek an urgent audience with Minister of Sports, Arts and Culture Zizi Kodwa, the Confederation of African Football (Caf) president Patrice Motsepe and stakeholders that support professional football.
The two organisations have been at loggerheads over several issues and it is not clear what made the league take its latest stance.