From a small garage start-up to a powerhouse of sports coverage, South African Super Sports is the benchmark for coverage of live rugby. Anyone traveling through Asia will have undoubtedly watched rugby courtesy of Super Sports, perhaps not realizing that the satellite feed is most likely illegal.
Bowing to the rugby tv gods, Super Sports will, at the end of this month, reduce their satellite footprint and beam only into the African continent.
The rather oversize satellite dish, which quite inexplicably found its way onto my rooftop here in Hong Kong, will fall silent and the light of rugby will darken across the lengths of India, China and other corners of Asia. And millions of sports fans will look towards other sports to follow, with football being the likely winner.
So the coverage for Super 14 and Tri Nations and limited coverage is now in the hands of the Australian Network, who do a fair presentation, but certainly not in-depth coverage of rugby.
So all is good and well at least for the next two weeks.
At the end of the Super 14, Australian Network cannot beam out Super 14 into Asia, and all rugby coverage will cease by the end of the year.
But the rugby TV gods have a plan to expand the game – they have sold the Asian rights to Ireland based Setanta. Or more precisely, to three Irish blokes – Michael O’Rourke, Leonard Ryan, and Mark O’Meara.
Nice.
Setanta is famous for losing USD$200 million in 2009 and bringing frustration to countless sports fans around the globe by messing up live games and constantly whining, then spectacularly losing exclusive television rights in multiple markets.
The end of Setanta seemed certain when its ineptness pushed it into administration in June 2009. Somehow, it managed to resurrect itself, with service now resuming in the UK.
Yet the antics continue with their entire US operations closing in February 2010.
And what are Setanta’s plans for rugby coverage into Hong Kong? There is no plan, but they are hoping they might be able to find a partner so that they can at least show the World Cup in Hong Kong.
Well, that’s a relief.
How did Setanta get these rights? How is the game supposed to grow if rugby enthusiasts have to go to extraordinary lengths just to watch a game?
Rugby Zone (formerly mediazone) offered a partial solution: Fee based internet feeds. But live games are presented in an epileptic inducing, low quality jittery “stream”. The saving grace used to be in the ability to download games which then offered the chance to get a relatively good version of the game.
However, this has been removed as an option.
I simply want to watch rugby games and we want the option to watch replays or download games when the time-zone doesn’t suit. And many of us are more than happy to pay for it.
But where in this wired Earth can we do this?
All is not well with the State of Rugby Union in Asia.
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