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No SAFA matches to be broadcast on SABC

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The South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) will not broadcast Saturday’s 2019 Africa Cup of Nations qualifier between South Africa and the Seychelles on neither its television platforms nor its radio stations.

Negotiations for the rights between the public broadcaster and the SABC to broadcast the match or future internationals for that matter reached a deadlock.

The SABC says it has made a commercially viable offer for the broadcast rights which SAFA rejected.

There has been uncertainty throughout the week whether South Africans would be able to watch and listen to the Bafana Bafana/Seychelles match on SABC platforms.

But now the public broadcaster has admitted that it won’t be broadcasting the match to millions of South Africans.

This after the public broadcaster and SAFA failed to reach an agreement on the broadcast rights of the match against Seychelles and October’s Afcon qualifier against Nigeria.

SABC COO Chris Maroleng says this is regrettable.

“Safa has informed us that because we have been unable to conclude the agreement they will not permit us these rights and I regret to inform South Africans that we won’t broadcast this match.”

In September, the SABC and SAFA reached a last minute agreement on the broadcast rights for Bafana Bafana’s match against Libya. While South Africans were spared the agony of not being able to watch their national team in action, it seems this time around there will be no last minute deal.

“We had already deployed our outside broadcast equipment to FNB Stadium and we’d done it in good faith. However, on arrival SAFA denied us access,” says Maroleng.

It seems that for the SABC to afford the rights it would have had to break the bank. SAFA apparently wanted 10 times more than what the SABC reportedly previously paid for matches organised by SAFA .

“The leadership of the SABC does not want to enter into any commercial arrangements where they could be seen to be engaged in some form of reckless trading,” says Maroleng.

The Bafana Bafana-Seychelles match at the FNB Stadium kicks off at three o’clock on Saturday afternoon.

 

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