This is unprecedented dear reader. SuperSport has lost the rights to one of the most important sporting events in the world and they
never lose the rights to anything.
As you know, they always win when it comes to sporting deals and negotiations, but not this time.
They've lost the rights to the 2023 Indian Premier League for the first time in the tournament's history.
This from their statement confirming that they won't be airing it:
SuperSport previously held broadcast rights to the Indian Premier League (IPL).
Following unsuccessful commercial discussions with the rights holder, we will therefore not broadcast the IPL as of this year’s edition.
The tournament starts tomorrow, Friday 31 March, so this is a huge and sudden loss for cricket fans and subscribers who rely on SuperSport, trusting that they'll be at the forefront of every important global event.
Is it over for South Africans or has someone else outbid them?
We presume the latter because we highly doubt the IPL wouldn't want to be in South Africa considering how popular it's always been. The country has strong ties with it too - it was held here in 2009.
Also, according to various sources, including
this article on Techcrunch.com and
this one on cashnsport.com, the rights for sub-Saharan Africa were bought by Viacom last year, now known as Paramount.
As we've reported in the TVSA News Shorts, their streaming service Paramount+ launches in South Africa this year so it's looking highly possible that part of the tournament will stream there once it launches - if it launches in time. The IPL runs over two months.
The site is live here but not active yet:
Paramount+
We've got our radars to the ground to find out what's happening next. Let us know if you hear a beep.
The disturbing and disempowering thing about all these sports broadcast wars and TV show deals between broadcasters, streamers and other entities is that it's
always viewers who ultimately have to pay.