KPL pursue new television deal, mull action against SS

The Kenyan Premier League are consulting with their Spanish partners, La Liga, regarding the private packaging and selling of the local league’s broadcast rights.

At the same time, KPL have approached their legal team concerning SuperSport’s abrupt termination of their multi-million broadcast rights sponsorship deal last month with a view of seeking redress in a court of law.

Speaking from Johannesburg in South Africa where he is on official duty, KPL Chief Executive Officer Jack Oguda said that all these was discussed during KPL’s last Executive Committee meeting.

Oguda said that getting the league back on live television was a priority for the members and that data collection is currently ongoing to help guide the league on the matter.

“La Liga are our partners now and they have taken an interest to help us get the games back on air.

“Right now we are getting data locally which we will share with them so that they can give us a way forward.

“They (La Liga) have advised that giving the broadcast rights to organisations that are Free To Air would be the most viable place to start from and once they get that data they will be able to give further advise on how to package and even approach potential buyers.”

But this proposal first rolled off the mouths of Football Kenya Federation last month, and they even went ahead to acquire substantial amounts of money (Sh75 million) in grants from Fifa for this purpose.

“We will produce these matches ourselves. Let’s take control of the content and then go mobile, FTA and PayTV. Exciting times ahead. We have to produce all the matches. Nine every weekend. Package highlights, preview etc. from one source. Content control,” FKF president Nick Mwendwa had said at the time.

Oguda however said that theirs will be a separate venture, as La Liga look well capable of helping KPL achieve their objective much faster.

“We had discussed this in our Joint Executive Committee meeting, but now that the La Liga representatives are in the picture, we feel that their route is also worth pursuing.”

KPL entered a three-year partnership with their La Liga on Thursday last week that would see them benefit from their counterparts’ expertise in league management.

The new partnership, for which there will be no financial gains, came one month after South African broadcasters SuperSport terminated their contract with the local league organisers citing breach of contract and eventually laid off more than 100 employees in the country.