DStv operator MultiChoice has experienced a significant decline, losing 2.8 million subscribers since its peak on 31 March 2023, dropping from 17.3 million to 14.5 million—an overall decrease of more than 16% in just two years.
Recently, MultiChoice’s new owner, French media conglomerate Groupe Canal+, shared an investor presentation highlighting this downward trend, which is not only reflected in subscriber numbers but also in other critical metrics such as revenue and trading profit.
The decline in MultiChoice’s subscriber base has been apparent in South Africa since 2016, coinciding with the global expansion of Netflix, which began its services in January of that year at CES. Initially, MultiChoice offset subscriber losses by gaining traction with lower-tier packages and expanding into other African markets.
After separating from Naspers in 2019, MultiChoice combined DStv Premium subscribers with Compact Plus into a new “Premium market segment,” masking the decline in DStv Premium for a period. However, by 2021, even the combined metrics began to show a downturn.
To adapt, MultiChoice changed its reporting metrics from total subscribers to a 90-day active subscriber count. This methodological shift allowed the company to disguise the drop in subscriber numbers until the 2023 financial year, during which subscriber growth in other African regions also declined significantly, and projections indicated continued drops into 2024 and 2025.
In its last financial report for the year ending 31 March 2025, before Canal+’s complete takeover, MultiChoice attributed its struggles to a range of macroeconomic challenges. “The past two financial years have been marked by considerable economic disruption across sub-Saharan Africa due to difficult macroeconomic conditions,” the report stated. The company also cited piracy, the rise of streaming services, and social media as factors negatively affecting performance.
In addition to losing 2.8 million traditional linear TV subscribers, MultiChoice faced a substantial US$596 million revenue setback due to local currency depreciation against the US dollar. The company’s management took steps to mitigate these challenges, including maintaining a systematic approach to pricing by implementing an average inflationary increase of approximately 5.7% in South Africa for FY25, alongside a 31% average increase in local currencies across the rest of Africa.
These measures allowed MultiChoice to alleviate volume pressures, resulting in a 1% year-on-year organic revenue growth for the current fiscal year. Furthermore, the group achieved US$216 million in cost savings, surpassing its initial target of US$117 million and the revised mid-year target of US$146 million.
Despite these savings, MultiChoice reported a 9% year-on-year decline in organic trading profit, partially due to increased operational costs associated with Showmax during its investment peak year.
In a presentation shared on 21 November, Canal+ outlined its plans to revive MultiChoice’s growth through strategic interventions. This includes focusing on subscriber acquisition in Africa’s underutilised pay-TV market and balancing subscriber acquisition expenses with operational synergies and optimal distribution strategies. Canal+ emphasised a commitment to all markets on the continent, indicating that no market is too insignificant for investment aimed at future growth.
Along with bolstering subscriber acquisition, Canal+ intends to refine MultiChoice’s customer value proposition by enhancing content offerings, sharing content across platforms, and applying effective marketing strategies. Additionally, the plan involves resetting the cost framework to establish a sustainable and profitable pay-TV model, diverging from past strategies that focused primarily on short-term profitability. The goal is to achieve significant cost synergies, setting the stage for a more robust financial future for MultiChoice.
