Exploring the Effectiveness of Alternative Dispute Resolution in Resolving Broadcasting and Media Rights Disputes in Tanzanian Football: A Comparative Study with South Africa

Television money has become the main reason professional football in Africa can pay its bills. In Tanzania, Azam Media agreed in 2021 to pay about TSh 225.6 billion over ten years for the rights to the mainland premier league. In South Africa, SuperSport has held the larger part of premium football rights since the late 1990s and has sub-licensed selected matches to the public broadcaster. Contracts of that size produce arguments, and arguments need somewhere to go. This article asks a narrow question: if a broadcasting or media rights dispute arises in Tanzanian football, is there any alternative dispute resolution mechanism designed to receive it? The question is answered by reading the Tanzanian statutes, regulations and institutional rules against their South African equivalents, and by tracing how real disputes in both countries have actually been handled. The finding is that Tanzania has a modern and in some respects generous ADR framework. Court-annexed mediation is compulsory, the Arbitration Act of 2020 is a serious piece of reform, and mediators and arbitrators are now accredited under regulations made in 2021. Yet no part of that framework was built with sports broadcasting in mind, and no institution has claimed the subject. South Africa is only partly better placed. It has a sector-specific rule that requires sports broadcasting rights to be negotiated on fair, open and non-discriminatory terms and allows unresolved disputes to be reported to the communications regulator, and it has two dispute bodies inside football. But neither football body has jurisdiction over commercial media rights, and the country's largest sports broadcasting fights of the past decade were settled by competition authorities and commercial bargaining rather than by mediation or arbitration. The problem in Tanzania is therefore not a shortage of ADR law. It is the absence of a designated door. The article proposes six practical changes that would create one.