The Sunday Mail
Sir
18area.coms
THE Premier Soccer League is behaving like an ugly but confident girl, turning down all suitors coming its while waiting for the big catch that may never come.
The Castle Lager PSL season came to life yesterday and for the first time in six years there were no SuperSport cameras to carry the action live across Africa.
It’s rather late but it must be dawning on us now that for all its shortcomings, the partnership between the PSL and Supersport was good for our game.
That marriage gave us pride of place on the scrumptious football table that SuperSport offers. That marriage gave our players the chance to strut their stuff on the grand stage.
But amid rumours that Kwese TV would bid for PSL broadcasting rights this season, we started pulling the middle finger at SuperSport towards the end of last term, accusing them of giving us a raw deal.
The SuperSport guys must have been shocked by our sudden arrogance but played it cool and chose to watch the action – or non-action – from a distance.
And just when people expected Kwese to undress and jump into bed with the PSL, the Econet Media subsidiary announced that it is not interested: not now, not ever.
“Our attention has been drawn to various reports linking Kwese TV, an entity of Econet Media, to bid for Zimbabwe Premier Soccer League television rights.
“Econet Media wishes to make it clear that it has not submitted any bids nor entered into any negotiations for the said rights and does not plan to do so now or in the near future,” said Kwese in a statement last month.
The grapevine immediately went into overdrive.
There were claims that Kwese TV had cooled off its interest in the PSL after their mobile telecoms rival, NetOne struck, agreements with the league’s big boys – Dynamos, Highlanders and Caps United.
A partnership between Kwese and PSL would have seen an Econet subsidiary help advertise NetOne products!
Unperturbed, the PSL invited interested parties to bid for rights to broadcast matches both on radio and television.
Several entities submitted their tender documents but were all rebuked because “their bids lacked paperwork and did not meet expectations”, it was announced Friday.
The process will be reopened again.
It appears the men who are mismanaging the top flight believe that ours is a football product like no other, a package that broadcasting companies should move mountains to gain access to.
Those chaps need to sit down and be humble!
They need to be realistic and always bear in mind what Delta expect to get from their continued sponsorship of the PSL. Delta want mileage, they don’t make it a secret.
“Any sponsor dreams of amplification of their property through earned media,” said the company’s marketing director Maxen Karombo at last year Soccer Star of the Year Awards.
Instead of playing hard ball, the PSL should be reaching out to media companies, meeting them halfway.
ZBC are understood to have thrown their hat into the ring and the national broadcaster deserves a chance to beam PSL matches.
This belief that the national broadcaster and a private player cannot co-exist is misplaced.
We just need to look across the Limpopo where SABC and SuperSport both sit on ABSA Premiership dinner table.
But hey, perhaps common sense is not so common after all.
Sir exits the scene!
