Opinion: Is Canal+ a big minus for sports fans?

South African sport fans will be nervously keeping an eye on developments at SuperSport, after parent company Canal+ started cutting various events in an effort to save money and bring production costs down. The French media giant completed their buyout of MultiChoice in September last year, and have since gone on a big restructuring drive as they look to streamline the DSTv and SuperSport brands. The Citizenreportsthat for South African sports fans however it is a worrying time, as SuperSport currently offers arguably the best and most value for money sports package in the world.

Due to their massive monopoly on sports content, and having no real challenger in Africa, SuperSport own the distribution rights to basically all of the biggest local and international sporting codes from around the world, and is one of the main reasons for the massive growth of MultiChoice over the years. There is no other sports provider in the world that can offer you almost every single sporting code in one package, as in most other countries there are multiple different distributors fighting for the TV rights. But Canal may be looking to change that, as they are quietly cutting back on some of the content that has previously been available.Luckily so far it has been in the “less watched sports” that they have been cutting back, as in December and January the PDC World Darts Championship, which was shown in 2024/25, wasn’t shown this time.

Now the Winter Olympics has also been cut from their slate, and although this isn’t a big loss for casual sporting viewers, proper local fans of both will be very disappointed. Even though interest in Super Rugby has dwindled massively in SA since the local teams left the competition, it has still been available to watch every year, but word on the street is that Canal will not be renewing their contract for it from next year. Hopefully they will only cut sports on the platform with small viewership records, but the moment they cut something big it could spark a major backlash from sports fans against the new owners.

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