Safa and SABC renew broadcast deal

The South African Football Association (Safa) has renewed its broadcast contract with the SABC for four years, the two bodies announced on Thursday.

The announcement was made at the SABC's headquarters in Auckland Park and live on SABC Sport by Safa president Danny Jordaan, SABC group CEO Nomsa Chabeli and the public broadcaster's head of sport Keletso Totlhanyo.

“It’s my great honour to announce that Safa and the SABC have renewed their partnership that has held us in good stead for the past 32 years and that has allowed South Africans to be part of the football journey. We have an agreement in place for another four-year cycle,” Chabeli said.

“What's exciting about this new cycle is also that it's not just limited to the senior teams, for example Bafana Bafana. It's also got the Banyana Banyana matches and the [women's] Hollywoodbets Super League.

“But also for me personally I love that we are going to be able to showcase grassroots leagues, which are critical for this country in terms of people coming out in numbers and playing and the future stars in football.”

Totlhanyo said the deal will encompass the broadcasting of “Bafana Bafana and Banyana Banyana matches and all Safa events”.

“We’ll still continue the [Bafana] team announcements here at the SABC, and we are going to have a weekly magazine [show] where we are going to cover everything about South African football [including] sponsorships — we’ll give Safa's sponsors the opportunity to tell us about their involvement and relationship with Safa.

“It will also give us the opportunity to cover more of the development side of football and where possible we will be streaming these matches from the provinces on SABC+, but definitely live matches of Bafana, Banyana, Abantwana [the South African women’s U-17s], and Hollywoodbets still every Sunday on SABC1.”

Jordaan, asked about restrictions that exist where games are organised by Fifa or the Confederation of African Football. 

“At international level there are [official] matches organised by Caf and Fifa where normally they would negotiate the rights,” he said.

“We indicated to them our preference is with the SABC because of its ability to transmit to virtually every South African but we don't have those rights.

“But when it comes to international friendly matches those are our rights and that is where we can deal with the SABC.

“And then all of the other competitions — the Hollywoodbets, [women's lower tier] Sasol League, the ABC Motsepe League, the regional league are controlled by Safa and there we have the ability to present those to the SABC.

“The SABC's willingness to focus on what's happening below national level is very important to us,

“We look forward to the magazine programme where we can highlight what is happening in our regions.”