Bafana blackout: What happens when a TV deal goes sour

The question, however, still remains as to whether South Africa will be able to watch the game on television.

SuperSport announced ahead of this weekend that they would not be showing any more Confederation of African Football (Caf) matches, following the collapse of Caf’s television rights deal with French broacasting company Lagardere. SuperSport’s broadcast deal for the 2021 Afcon qualifiers was with Lagardere, and as such they said they were unable to show either the Caf Under-23 Africa Cup of Nations tournament, currently taking place in Egypt, in which South Africa are trying to qualify for Tokyo 2020, or the Afcon qualifiers.

Phakaaathi was told yesterday that there were some behind-the-scenes negotiations taking place between Caf and SuperSport in an attempt to resolve the issue, but at the time of going to print, the matter was not sorted out and SuperSport’s official line that it would not be showing the matches.

The South African Broadcasting Coroporation, meanwhile did recently sign a deal with the South African Football Association to broadcast Bafana matches, among other national team games.
But this deal only included Bafana’s home games in the Afcon 2021 qualifying campaign, and it seems unlikely that the cash-strapped national broadcaster would stump up more cash to show Bafana’s game against the Black Stars.

It points to further shambolic organisation within Caf that they have pulled out of a broadcast deal on the eve of the start of qualifying for the biggest tournament on their books, even if the deal was, according to a Caf statement, declared “null and void” by the Egyptian Competitions Authority.

And it is a real shame that the people of this country do not know whether they will be able to watch their side play, just days before the game is supposed to kick off.

Hopefully, it will be resolved, but I, for one, am not holding my breath. And just when the problems of watching Bafana seemed to have been solved by this SABC/Safa deal.

Either way, one hopes Molefi Ntseki’s Bafana can pull off the kind of result in the Cape Coast that Stuart Baxter’s Bafana managed in their opening qualifier for the 2019 Africa Cup of Nations, where a 2-0 win in Nigeria got their campaign off to an absolute flyer.

Ghana are certainly not the force they were, and Bafana do have players coming into camp in excellent form, and on the back of a confidence-boosting win over Mali in the Nelson Mandela Challenge last month.

Ntseki must also know he cannot take too much from that win, however, and that he will ultimately be judged on his competitive record. In this sense, his Bafana coaching career really starts this week, with the game against Ghana and the clash with Sudan at Orlando Stadium on Sunday.

Bafana did not have the best record under Baxter at home in 2019 Afcon and 2018 Fifa World Cup qualifying, drawing with Libya and Nigeria, and losing to the Cape Verde Islands and Senegal. If Ntseki can get a point in Ghana and win at home to Sudan, frankly, it will be a fine start to Bafana’s bid to get to Cameroon 2021.

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