- SuperSport and SABC Sport both failed to broadcast Saturday's CAF Champions League match between African Stars and Orlando Pirates
- The host broadcast feed at the Botswana National Stadium collapsed at kick-off, cutting transmission to rights holders in South Africa
- SABC Sport attempted to switch to a Facebook live stream as a last resort, but that feed also cut out mid-game
DStv subscribers and SABC viewers were left without coverage of Saturday's CAF Champions League preliminary round match between Namibia's African Stars and Orlando Pirates after a catastrophic broadcast failure wiped out the live feed entirely.
The first leg of the secondary preliminary round match, scheduled for kick-off at 15:00 on Saturday, 18 October 2026, was played at the Botswana National Stadium in Gaborone. Both SuperSport and SABC Sport held the rights to broadcast the fixture but were unable to air it after the host production infrastructure collapsed before a ball had even been kicked.
Why African stars were responsible for the feed
Under CAF regulations, broadcasting rights and production responsibilities during the preliminary rounds fall to the designated home club, regardless of where the match is physically staged.
In this case, that meant African Stars, not Botswana, were obligated to hire a local production crew, source broadcast equipment, and deliver a satellite uplink feed to international rights holders including SuperSport and SABC Sport.
The Namibian club's technical set-up suffered a complete failure from the moment of kick-off, cutting transmission to both broadcasters simultaneously.
SABC's facebook fallback also failed
SuperSport's blackout on Canal+'s DStv platform was matched by an identical outage on SABC2. In a bid to salvage something for viewers, SABC Sport switched to a live stream on its official Facebook page as a last resort. That stream also went down mid-match, leaving thousands of Orlando Pirates supporters with no way to follow the game.
SABC Sport issued a brief public apology, saying:
"We apologise for the technical difficulties affecting our live broadcast of the African Stars vs Orlando Pirates match. Our technicians are working on it."
The match concluded with Orlando Pirates winning 1-0, though the result was only confirmed after the fact by those who had managed to find alternative coverage.
Source: Briefly News
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