By Monwabisi Jimlongo
SABC Sport general manager Gary Rathbone has promised that the public broadcaster is going to show more live local boxing going forward.
Rathbone revealed to Ink Sport that the public broadcaster is going to launch a sport channel next week. And this is where Rathbone promises to show more live local fights.
“We are limited because of space on SABC. We are launching a new channel on SABC Sport next week. With that we will offer more space to boxing. We will make sure that global and international events are on that platform,” Rathbone said.
SABC TV has not shown live local boxing in a long time. Instead, the public broadcaster has been streaming local tournaments since last year.
“We have had about seven or eight local fights since last year. We’ve been doing them regularly already. Last weekend, we had two at the same time. We had to run one, the other had to be delayed. The highlights are gonna be on this Friday’s TKO. It’s just that with the new channel you will be able to watch on Open View set top box,” Rathbone said.
The scarcity of live local fights on SABC TV forced boxing stakeholders to march to the SABC headquarters in Auckland Park, Johannesburg, in November last year. There was understanding that the SABC was gonna go back to the boxing stakeholders with positive news in February this year.
“I haven’t really come back to them because we just moved ahead to bring boxing back to the SABC. We have had quite a lot of local fights that have been covered. Already, we have had a number of international bouts. In two weekends we are gonna have another big boxing event. In fact, it’s a world title fight,” Rathbone said.
“We have also bought an international show – one of the top international weekly magazine shows called Boxing World Weekly. What I have been trying to do was move ahead and try to deliver as much boxing content as I can.”
SABC TV showed more live local and international boxing during the dark days of apartheid. The public broadcaster tried to do the same during the democratic era, but that fizzled out. Even the much-punted ‘Boxing is Back’ was short-lived.
