GTV closure Hurts Africa

Football fans in many parts of Africa woke up to sad news last Friday. They were to miss most of what has been dubbed as England’s leading drama series, the Barclay’s Premier League together with a host of other matches from other leading European football leagues. Satellite pay television broadcaster GTV, with up to 80% rights to broadcast the live matches, went into liquidation. Indeed, most people did not watch the weekend matches including the hugely anticipated Liverpool V Chelsea match.

In a shock move, Gateway Broadcast Services, the owners of the London based TV announced January 30th that the company was to be liquidated. In a statement on GTV website:

The current financial and global crisis has severely interrupted the company’s ability to secure further funding for the continued operation of the business.

The company has worked extensively with external advisors and all internal resources to investigate, evaluate and analyze strategic alternatives for the Company to further continue to operate. In determining to approve the Company’s plan of Liquidation, the board and management carefully reviewed the advice and findings.

The company also says it has invested over US$200 million in 2 years across the 22 markets and had over 100,000 subscribers in Africa. The statement continues:

We realise the negative impact this has had on our loyal customers, creditors and staff, all of who have believed in GTV and the revolution in pay TV it had created. We have tried every possible step to keep the company going but we are all the unfortunate victims of the current global economic crisis.

GTV had other programmes like drama series, soaps, news channels and others on its menu broadcast to countries like Botswana, Kenya, Cameroon, Gambia, Gabon, Ghana, Lesotho, Liberia, Malawi, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Right until the end, there was no indication that GTV was experiencing any problem and they were busy subscribing more customers.

The company had a huge task of competing with South African based Multichoice, which had monopolized the market for many years, a task that is believed to have failed. The fate of creditors is still not known as there is no official communication to address the issue. Customer service help lines also allegedly redirect callers to the press statement.