African pay-TV channels are now faced with the novel challenge of screening local content, besides scrambling for the core product: English Premier League broadcasting rights.

While trying to attract and retain football lovers, service providers are grappling with a new directive by various governments in East Africa to balance locally produced programmes and foreign ones.

Recent reports in Kenya indicate that a consortium of operators, led by HiTV and including Zuku TV (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania), have come together to bid for the 2010-11 English Premier League rights.

Zuku is owned by Wananchi Online and Mitsumi Cable Vision — who joined hands late last year and rebranded to offer an exciting range of cable TV packages.

Toyin Subair, chief executive officer of HiTV, told The EastAfrican: “The English Premier League draws more African viewers than any other genre of programming. We want to streamline the model to allow broadcasters and viewers to have greater control of this content.”

The challenge for the consortium, however, will be how to gain viewers’ trust after Gateway Broadcasting Services, the holding company for GTV, closed shop recently to the chagrin of sport enthusiasts.

This happened barely two years after the company took over 80 per cent of the English Premier League screening in the region and committed itself to offer more local and regional content — including the Confederation of East and Central Africa Football tournaments.

Business rival DStv, which has since taken over those rights, is easily becoming a market leader in providing consistent content and sport.

DStv has invested heavily in sport in the region. In soccer, it gave the Kenya Premier League a new lease of life with the signing of a Sh440 million ($5.5 million) deal to screen its matches from 2008 to 2011.

And in March 2008, MultiChoice (its parent company), launched an outside broadcast van.

The eight-camera van worth over Ksh180 million ($2 million), has transformed the way sport is broadcast.

Not only have soccer games been transmitted from the newly refurbished Cocoa Cola Stadium, but for the first time there was live broadcast from World Hope Stadium outside the city centre.

DStv’s Super Sport channel recently broadcast live rugby games from Nairobi, such as the World Junior Championship.

With this massive investment, which has included the training of a local crew, Multi-Choice is asserting itself as a leader in the market.

“It is our responsibility to develop and support the production industries, through M-Net, and our sport through Super Sport,” said Stella Ondimu, DStv public relations manager.

The DStv menu now comprises more local content. Recently, subscribers were pleasantly surprised to watch a film in a Kenyan local language on Africa Magic Plus, a channel dedicated to East Africa.

The channel also screens Kiswahili films that identify with the day-to-day lives of many subscribers. For instance, Stand Up Uganda, in which one comedian will walk home with $100,000, is very popular. In Kenya, the Patricia Show is a huge success.

With the current economic recession and high inflation, the operators are trying to outdo each other in the drive for premium, property acquisition and retention of their subscriber base.