Super League of Malawi (Sulom) says the successful bidder for TNM Super League matches’ live broadcasting rights will be announced in two weeks.
Sulom executive committee member Chimwemwe Nyirenda, who is also the body’s media committee chairperson, said this at Chilomoni Stadium in Blantyre on Monday after unveiling financial proposals of four media houses that have shown interest in the rights for television and radio broadcast.
He also said the top-flight league runners will first look at media houses’ technical capabilities when assessing bids.
Nyirenda said their past experiences taught them not to be only be influenced by the highest bidders “before scrutinising some technicalities”.
He said: “Bid winners will be known in two weeks because we need to go deep by evaluating the technical capabilities of all the bidders.
“For instance, we need to look at how many cameras the media house will offer for live broadcast and their ability to travel to all the agreed games. One might be the highest bidder yet giving us poor quality results on the ground.”
Nyirenda said a special committee will be set up to look at such technicalities before unveiling the winner.
During the bids unveiling, Times Group emerged the highest bidder with a financial proposal of K191 million per season for 80 matches; 40 high-profile games in Blantyre and the same number in Lilongwe.
Malawi Broadcasting Station (MBC) came second with a proposal of K64 million, targeting 80 matches at K800 000 per match while Zodiak Broadcasting Station (ZBS) came third with a proposal of K18 million targeting 90 matches at K200 000 per match.
However, Malawi Institute of Journalism’s MIJ FM bid was disqualified because, according to treasurer Malinda Chinyama, it did not have any financial proposal as per the requirements of the bids.
Chinyama said they are happy with the response from the interested media houses and are ready to work with the winning bidder once football restarts as, currently, there is uncertainty on resumption following government’s ban on contact sports due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Experts have warned Sulom to tread carefully on identifying the winner of the bid to avoid going through previous challenges that saw their exclusive broadcasting deal with the now-defunct Beta Television collapsing in 2017 after the station failed to fulfill its contractual obligations.
