The real issue and bottom line is that in order for the game to grow we need to make it accessible to everyone and whilst SuperSport has put in a tremendous amount of money and great initiatives to grow the game, the reality is that as long as SuperSport has exclusive rights to broadcast rugby on its channel, rugby will never be accessible to the general public who happen to be Black (?95% of the population?).
Rugby has to find its way on to a Free to Air channel, and not be governed by the size of the cheque!
A TV audience analysis on youth rugby viewers was conducted by Repucom and here are some of the findings: Live Springbok games on SuperSport had 1.21m viewers of the unique viewers under 19-years-old compared to delayed Springbok games on SABC which had 3.51m viewers.
On SuperSport only 18% of its total viewers were under 19-years-old and SABC had 30% of its total unique viewers under the ages of 19.
The numbers don't lie and there is clearly a hunger for the general public to watch rugby and I hope SuperSport and SABC can come up with some sort of an agreement to show more rugby to South Africans that cannot afford to pay for DSTV.
You may be wondering why I am dragging SuperSport into the transformation debate but I believe it's imperative for rugby to be accessible to all people whether that be on TV or on the playing field.
