Supersport’s Head of Africa Strategy, Stanley Mathews, has warned the Botswana Football Association (BFA) that by failing to act decisively and bring the RP Productions matter to finality can ruin their future prospects and create a negative image about the country.
In a strongly worded email to Botswana Premier League Chief Executive Officer, Bennett Mamelodi on December 20, 2012 Mathews said by keeping the matter grey and not proceeding with the court action to finality, BPL are allowing RP to ruin future prospects on top of the past damage.
“Please treat this as urgent as my colleagues are beginning to think negatively about Botswana because of this,” he said.
This email trail has catapulted the BFA into action, filing an urgent application with the High Court on Thursday afternoon, asking court to confirm the termination of the broadcasting agreement concluded between them and RP Productions by a letter dated 21 September 2012. Mathews had cautioned that “you need to deal formally and decisively to put the RP issue to bed once and for all as it keeps coming back to cause problems and undermine what we are trying to provide”.
The decision to sue was taken by the Premier League Board on 22 January 2013 and confirmed by the National Executive Committee three days later. The case will be heard on Friday.
Within the email trail is correspondence between Kgosana Masaseng (RPP representative in Botswana), and his Director, Robert Paltiel, and from the latter to Brandon Foot- Supersport Head of Acquisitions and Legal. In the emails to Supersport, RPP objects to the proposed agreement on the basis that BFA withdrew the matter from court on condition that they would like to settle the matter out of court. RPP also said they are waiting for the next round of negotiations and are puzzled that BFA could proceed to sign with a new broadcaster.
Prior to the court action, RPP had ignored an invitation by BFA to arbitration. BFA wrote RPP a letter on 01 November 2012 reiterating confirmation of termination of the contract between the parties and also invited RPP to a meeting for the discussion of preliminaries in respect of the proposed arbitration over BFA’s claim for money owing by the company. Meanwhile, negotiations for a production and broadcasting agreement resumed in earnest between BFA and Super sport. Mathews travelled to Gaborone on 6 November 2012 to meet BFA representatives and reaffirm their interest in the proposed deal.
The BFA delegation, which included attorneys Onkagetse Pusoentsi and Tshiamo Rantao, travelled to Johannesburg on the weekend of January 18-19, 2013 to continue negotiations. Sources close to the negotiations tell Sunday Standard that Supersport reiterated their concern regarding the outstanding issues between BFA and RPP. Apparently they told the BFA that they cannot enter into any agreement until the parties reach amicable settlement and termination of the current rights agreement between them or such relationship is terminated or confirmed terminated by the courts of law in Botswana.
BFA argues that the continued non broadcasting of games on television puts in jeopardy their sponsorship contracts with beMobile and Mascom worth millions of pula. Be Mobile sponsors the premier league for P8 million per season while the Mascom Top 8 is sponsored for P3.8 million. With the launch of Mascom Top coming in just three weeks, already Mascom Chief Marketing Officer Dzene Makwhade-Seboni has asked BFA via email to brief the sponsor about the TV rights issue. BFA also say the matter should be heard urgently because there is a lot of prejudice suffered by teams playing in the league and the general public should the matter be heard in the normal course.
