SportFive devil wears dollars

06 September 2011 - 02:37 By BBK
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To broadcast or not to broadcast. That is the million Zim dollar - or whatever currency tickles your fancy - question.

To broadcast would be the answer from SportFive, the greedy French company bequeathed the African football television rights by the Confederation of African Football (Caf).

And if you are the SABC, we want you to pay the premium so that the station can show the nation its beloved Bafana Bafana.

No way Jose, protests the public broadcaster.

Why charge me R5-million when the rest of my brothers and sisters pay a fraction of that sum - R1.4-million to be exact, and that is the maximum rate.

Dear reader, I understand your anger aimed at the broadcaster for failing to beam live pictures of Bafana's 2-1 defeat by Niger on Sunday.

As a law-abiding, tax-paying, football-loving citizen, who happens to pay your TV licence fee, you are the big boss.

And he who pays the piper, calls the tune.

But aren't you really barking up the wrong tree on this one?

Let me declare my interest upfront: I hold no brief for the SABC. Just because I do freelance soccer analysis work there does not make me an extension of their public relations machinery.

Your enemy is SportFive, the world's numero uno football agency.

It is one of the largest sports agencies worldwide, which boasts co-operations with more than 30 football associations.

The Confederation of African Football is one of those.

The Godfather of African football, Issa Hayatou's son, may or may not work for SportFive in London - WikiLeaks may or may not confirm or deny the veracity thereof.

SportFive holds the rights to all of Caf's competitions: Africa Cup of Nations, Africa Nations Championship, Africa Youth Championship, Champions League, Confederation Cup as well as all the qualifiers.

One of SportFive's locations is Africa, where it conducts financial suffocation en masse.

One of its primary targets is South Africa.

It is practising an unfair pricing policy.

It demands R5-million, plus R1-million for production, and the SABC still has to pay the receiver R600000 tax for transferring currency outside the country.

If not a stony silence, you have a better chance of succeeding at drawing blood from a stone than soliciting a comment from SportFive.

It also has the convenience of hiding behind confidentiality clauses and such claptrap.

He who has nothing to hide fears not the scrutiny of the media.

SportFive must stop fooling around. It must stop ripping off South Africa. It must charge us what is fair.

Some will argue, genuinely so, how much the SABC paid when the boy from England married his sweetheart in that right royal wedding.

Some will say, correctly so, why the heck didn't the SABC broadcast Judge Mogoeng Mogoeng's interview by the Judicial Service Commission on Saturday and Sunday?

Some are even jumping to say the broadcaster must be stripped of the rights and that they should be awarded to the pay channel in Randburg, perceived to be rolling in money.

But the problem is that for each street that has the luxury of DStv dishes aplenty, there are entire villages whose only dishes are the empty bowls they struggle to fill with food on a daily basis.

Pay TV for them remains as much a pipe dream as their wish to fly on an aircraft remains pie in the sky.

Instead of playing victim, the broadcaster should have used all the platforms at its disposal to explain, in all 11 official languages - plus tsotsi taal, the unofficial 12th local lingo - of the devil they are dealing with.

The broadcaster should have told SportFive to go bungee jumping without a rope around its ankles and see if it is going to come back.

You don't negotiate with the devil because the SportFive devil wears dollars (and that is not Zim dollars, my friend).

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