After terminating its broadcast deal with the Kenyan Premier League early April this year, Supersport has closed shop in Kenya and with it hundreds of jobs have been lost.
Ninety employees were officially terminated on 8th May 2017, with just about fifteen technical staff being retained to man the company’s state of the art production studios in Nairobi.
The cut backs, according to market analysts, are driven by corporate finance as pay television companies grapple with drop in revenue and increased expenditures.
Thanks mostly to the viewing habits of millennials, a lot of changes to the sports media landscape is inevitable.
A part from the job losses, the far reaching effects of Supersport’s exit in Kenya’s sports scene cannot be understated, as the company invested heavily in the sector.
Already the Kenya’s topflight is in the dark and the clubs are struggling to plug in the loss of broadcast revenue.
KPL received up-to Kshs 600,000,000 annually from Supersport.
Basketball and athletics have also not been spared as they have also been plugged off.
Supersport is the sports division of Multichoice, a leading video entertainment and internet company in Africa owned by Naspers, a multinational internet and media group in based South Africa.
Supersport’s numerous sports channels are carried on pay television behemoth DSTV.
The company also cancelled its broadcast contract with the Ghana Premier League and the Nigerian Professional Football League.
They have however increased their presence in the Zambian Super League but have not been able to air single match in Zimbabwe’s Premier Soccer League since the start of the 2017 season.
