MultiChoice Group is “accelerating” an investigation into whether it should unbundle its SuperSport channels from the rest of DStv. This comes as consumers continue their steady march away from the pay-television operator.
CEO Calvo Mawela revealed the plan in an interview with TechCentral last week and said a decision would be made by the end of the broadcaster’s financial year — March 31 2026.
The plan, as I understand it, could see MultiChoice offering general entertainment bouquets stripped of the SuperSport channels, presumably at a significantly lower monthly cost. Sports bundles could then be tacked on for those who want them.
This would keep those who can’t tell a cricket ball from a hockey ball happy, as they will no longer have to pay a premium for sports channels they never watch. And sports fans could add the sports bundles that most interest them — or subscribe to everything available, as I suspect many sports-crazy South Africans will do.
This is the approach taken by pay-TV operators around the world, including Sky in the UK and, yes, France’s Canal+, which is buying MultiChoice (regulators permitting). General entertainment channels are typically well priced on these platforms, with sports bundles commanding a hefty premium.
The news that MultiChoice is considering a move in this direction comes after it told investors last week that it had shed 1.2-million DStv customers in the year to end-March 2025 (600,000 in South Africa alone). That came on top of the 1.6-million subscribers who cancelled their subscriptions in the 2024 financial year. No business can sustain subscriber losses such as these for long. Radical interventions are needed to arrest the slide.
That MultiChoice is facing the most difficult time in its history is beyond doubt. What’s also evident is that the group, which was unbundled from Naspers and listed separately on the JSE in 2019, has failed to adapt quickly enough to fast-changing consumer viewing habits, which increasingly do not involve satellite television.
If it weren’t for the cash offer from Canal+, there’s little doubt that MultiChoice’s market valuation would be significantly lower than the R51bn it commands. The R125/share offer from the French broadcaster is keeping MultiChoice shares aloft.
It priced itself out of a market where consumers were — and are — under sustained financial pressure
How has it all gone so wrong for MultiChoice?
The biggest reason appears to be that it priced itself out of a market where consumers were — and are — under sustained financial pressure. As Mawela said last week, most people regard pay television as discretionary spending that gets cut first when they are forced to tighten their belts.
But even the relatively well-heeled have been abandoning DStv in droves, with subscriber losses first taking root in its premium segment. That suggests that as fibre broadband has been rolled out across the country in recent years, consumers have voted with their feet and chosen streaming alternatives such as Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video and YouTube Premium instead.
Unbundling SuperSport from DStv may be one way to stem the tide, as it may encourage those who don’t care about sport not to abandon the broadcaster’s entertainment offerings for competing platforms — provided the pricing is right.
But what about those who want only the sport and not MultiChoice’s general entertainment channels? If there’s a lesson in the mess, it’s this: listen to your customers and give them what they want, at competitive prices. If they want sports only, then offer that to them. Don’t make them pay for what they don’t want.
Mawela says unbundling SuperSport from DStv must deliver revenue and profit growth for the group and must not further erode the financial picture. That talk may appease investors.
Sometimes, though, shock therapy is needed. MultiChoice’s business model needs an overhaul to compete in a world in which streaming is fast taking over and in which the next generation of viewers prefers Netflix, TikTok and YouTube to traditional broadcasting.
Unbundling SuperSport from DStv is a good start. But it’s also only a start. MultiChoice needs to be nimbler and more creative, willing to disrupt itself in an increasingly competitive and cost-sensitive market.
It must be quicker to abandon what doesn’t work and start listening to its customers who have been saying for years — in news website comments, on social media and elsewhere — that they are not happy with its offering.
Any business that fails to listen to its clients, especially one that no longer has the market to itself, is asking for trouble.
McLeod is editor of TechCentral
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