Without Premier League, whither Kwese TV?

Lets face it, the English Premier League is the Golden Fleece that all along the television and content value chain seek.

When you find it, you know you are on to something very previous and you protect it with all the strength and guile at your disposal.

Saturdays have become very important to Accra-based Citi FM and its affiliates in the other regions because of the rights the station has to air matches for that league via Talk Sports. When you are driving on Saturdays or your DStv goes off at the least sight of rains or you just have not subscribed and a big match is in the offing, there would you know how important of the Citi FM commentary is. That's just even radio.

Multichoice and their partners and subsidiaries DStv and SuperSport may have always known this this, but they really felt the pain when GTV, or what was known in Ghana as GBS, took away the rights of the English Premier League.

It was very obvious therefore that they would not let go off the rights to the league without putting up a tough fight. They have protected it with their strength, experience and deep pockets over many years and they won’t just let go.

Thus when Joe Hunda, CEO of Econet Media, owners of Kwese TV mentioned with all the confidence he could muster that they would get the rights in 2019 when the next round of allocating it would come up it was a major shock to those who know these things.

“We are going to win the rights for the EPL in 2019,” said Mr. Hundah at the launch of Kwese TV in Ghana earlier this year. It was obvious he knew they won’t get it in 2017 and were therefore hedging against 2019, however the confidence was huge.

Kwese was entering the Ghanaian market on two fronts: Free-To-Air and Direct-To-Home (DTH). They had acquired Viasat1 TV to rebrand as Kwese Free Sports and the vehicle to exercise their FTA opportunities in the market.

The assurance was meant to reassure a market where people love their football and the English Premier League is so patronised that they’ve got this under control. However, the realities of the now is very important in these things.

Just a week or so ago news came out that SuperSport had secured the DTH rights to the Premier League for another three seasons. South African media had speculated that it cost the broadcaster a whooping GBP296million or something close to USD380million to acquire the DTH rights.

It must be said however that Econet also won the rights FTA across Africa. What that means is that they can show one match every weekend on free to air channels like Kwese Free Sport (former Viasat1) and also those FTA channels that want to buy the rights ought to go through them.

But the meat and potatoes of broadcasting live football matches, especially with regards to the EPL, on the continent is the ability to have rights to multiple matches on any given match day. I don’t know that exact statistic, but I could hazard a guess that more than 60% of people who renew their subscriptions for DStv in countries like Ghana and Nigeria do so because of assurance of multiple football matches.

That is what would hamper the growth of multi-channel TV platforms that compete with DStv but do not have the rights they have. Granted that Kwese TV would have the rights in 2019 as Mr. Hunda mentioned, what would encourage sign ups and continued subscriptions till then.

It must be said that Kwese TV has a lot more than just football, some of the channels on the Kwese TV bouquet are Kwese Prime, Kwese Stories, Kwese Movies 1, Kwese Movies 2, Kwese Movies 3, Kwese Know, Kwese Kids, Kwese Family, Kwese Free Sport, Kwese Sport 1, Kwese Sport 2, NBA TV, Revolt TV, E!, Trace Africa, Dreamworks, JimJam, etc.

 That being said, I am sure they have done their own internal analysis, projections and all the necessary considerations to know what would keep them afloat till the big ticket arrives. There is the need to look at other compelling content that would ensure that the subscriber base they will be building would remain loyal to them.

The fact is that there are other competitors in the market, like StarTimes, Multi TV, GoTV and both the analogue and the many digital FTA channels available in the market. The audience is spoilt for choice hence the need to battle for the best content to survive.

It’s a very long way to 2019 as far as content, building audience and business is concerned and in the pay TV world, like most other business environments, it is only the strongest who survive.

@TheGHMediaGuru