DStv speaks out on English Premier League broadcasting rights

Richard Tembedza, general manager, MultiChoice Kenya speaks on the premier league rights and the sensitive issue of price.

There are claims in the media that another pay TV company has all the rights to the English Premier League. What is your response?

As from this new season, no single pay TV company in sub-Saharan Africa will be able to screen 100% of the premiership.  The English premiership has from this season, been tiered into three packages: One with 80% of the matches which obviously everyone wants to get, one with 20% and another with about 10% which has been offered to free to air channels.

SuperSport has rights to the package with 20% of the English Premier League (EPL) games plus attached list of other important leagues. The lists of exactly which games are covered by the various packages is not yet out so again, nobody can claim they will screen exclusively all the games that involve top teams like Manchester United, Arsenal, Chelsea or Liverpool.

From this season, it is quite possible that a Liverpool supporter will see them play in a game on the new competitor's channel but may have to watch them on DStv the following week simply because that particular game is available on SuperSport only.  So, it is going to be quite interesting that way.

Exactly which matches will be included in the games that SuperSport will be showing?

The lists of exactly which matches have been allocated to who are not yet out and therefore nobody at the moment knows exactly which matches they will screen.
Again, there have been insinuations that if you want to see the games involving the top teams, you have to have the competitor's product, that cannot be further from the truth – nobody knows the game allocations as yet at this stage.

What soccer coverage does SuperSport have – EPL and otherwise. Is any of it exclusive?

SuperSport will have a lot of soccer and will screen over 800 matches in the coming season. SuperSport has secured exclusive rights to some of the most competitive leagues in Europe and to most of the European and English Cup competitions run through list

It is said that the new pay TV company plans to offer premium content at half of DStv's price.

Nothing can be further from the truth. There is an insinuation in that claim that DStv has put together channels and is unnecessarily overcharging subscribers and that the new competitor is launching with the same content (in terms of number of channels and the quality of those channels).

Now, let's unravel that claim: The competitor is launching with 16 channels and quite frankly, if you strip out the EPL from their offering, I don't know how “premium” the rest of the offering is.

DStv has over 50 channels – more than three times the number of channels the new competitor is offering.  Yes, there are claims that you do not need so many channels and at this stage, I also want to deal with that claim:

First, the modern household is not homogenous… The man in the house has typically his own choice of channels – usually sports, action flicks, news and documentaries.
The lady in the house has a different preference – and that is usually movies, series (eg BBC Prime, M-Net Series) and general entertainment type channels like M-Net and E! Entertainment. The children have their own channel preferences as well – music eg Channel O, Disney, Boomerang, Mindset Learn etc.

Over and above this, each segment of the household does not want to get stuck on one of those preferred genres – they demand choice between the various offerings.
That is what DStv has excelled in – we give each member of the household choice in terms of the genres of channels they choose to watch.  And across the board, we have some of the best channels the world has to offer!

Thirdly, we have three packages –
The DStv Family with 24 channels which is priced at a very affordable KSh1,350 per month.
The DStv Compact which is KSh1,725 per month and has 28 channels, and the DStv Premium which is KSh4,800 per month for more than 50 channels.  We cater for all income levels but even in the lower priced bouquets, we offer the world's best channels.
We are talking of a lifestyle product here and Africans are tired of being told what they can and cannot afford.

If you look around here in Kenya, people are driving some of the biggest and best cars, expensive clothes and so on, this is the African season, the African age – we are demanding the best - not a quickly stitched up offering.

How did SuperSport lose the rights to the bigger EPL package? Will the price of DStv come down now that the EPL is no longer 100% available on DStv?

One, the rights to the EPL are awarded through a closed tender process and although SuperSport put in a bid which was four times higher than our previous bid, somebody else got the rights to the 80% package.  We estimate that the winner paid six times what SuperSport paid previously.

It is interesting, but of course difficult to fathom that, although we paid four times what the previous price was, we actually got less of the EPL – competition increases cost of content and that's why the price of DStv cannot come down.

What are SS advantages that will ensure you retain your sport following in the face of competition?

10 dedicated sports channels, three spill-over channels and, we screen a variety of live events – if like the competition you have two channels, once there is two tennis matches like happens a lot at Wimbledon, and Formula, and soccer, it is quite clear you can't screen all these live.  SuperSport can.

There claims that they (the new pay TV) will offer equipment at half your price.

Our equipment is currently selling for KSh17,000, I doubt that anyone can have a viable business if they sell their equipment at half of that price ie KSh8500.

Isn't it possible to offer DStv at half the price?

It Is only possible if we reduce the number of channels and the quality of the channel offering.