StarTimes has taken up the Uefa national-team competition rights vacated by the demise of Kwesé TV.
The pan-African pay-television broadcaster has acquired non-exclusive English-language pay-television rights across the region – excluding South Africa – for properties including next summer’s European Championships, the 2021-22 Uefa Nations League and European teams’ qualifiers to the Fifa World Cup 2022.
The rights are shared with pay-television broadcaster SuperSport, which holds: exclusive free-to-air and pay-television rights in South Africa; non-exclusive English-language pay-television rights across the rest of sub-Saharan Africa; and exclusive French-language pay-television rights across sub-Saharan Africa.
SuperSport and Kwesé struck deals for the properties with Uefa in 2017; the deal saw Uefa increase its national-team properties fee income by roughly 70 per cent.
Kwése had been struggling with financial issues before its parent company, Econet Media, announced that it would be discontinuing the business from August 5. StarTimes had been capitalising on Kwése’s demise by growing its football property portfolio steadily over the last 18 months.
StarTimes will broadcast its first game as part of the deal on September 5.