On Thursday, the CEO of MultiChoice, a pay television company in South Africa, stated that the company may unbundle its sports channels into a different subscription package to retain subscribers.
CEO Calvo Mawela was questioned about whether the company was considering separating its sports channels into a separate package when he presented the group’s results one day after announcing a headline loss of 800 million rand ($45 million).
“As part of our product offering, we have always had this project that we ran every year where we look at our packaging structures, similar to what Sky did some years back where they had a basic package, they had a sports package on the side (and) they had a general entertainment package on the side,” Mawela said.
Preference of customers for premium sports package
MultiChoice offers bundled packages ranging from entry-level to premium through its pay TV service, Dstv, which includes all sports channels under the SuperSport brand.
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However, some clients only purchase the premium package for sporting events, which frequently makes maintaining it during the off-season costly and results in cancellations.
“We’ve accelerated that project in terms of getting us to finalise which direction we’re going to take in this financial year. But yes, we are considering all options as part of a broader product offering going forward,” Mawela said.
The consideration to unbundle the sports channels is coming at a time when MultiChoice, a potential acquisition target for France’s Canal+ (CAN.L), dropped from 14.5 million broadcast subscribers to 1.2 million during the year that ended March 31.
It attributed the situation to the ongoing crisis in the cost of living, which “has meant that households are struggling to make ends meet, and many had no choice but to give up their DStv subscription for the time being.”
The continuous global trend of video consumption shifting toward less expensive streaming services, social media video, and free or pirated video services has also impacted the South African market.
MultiChoice subscribers’ lost
Techpression had earlier reported that Nigeria accounted for more than half of MultiChoice’s 1.2 million subscriber losses in the fiscal year ending March 2025, as economic pressures and rising prices forced many viewers to cut back on pay-TV services across the continent.
This drove down the company’s revenue by nine per cent.
The active subscriber base of the pan-African pay-TV operator dropped by eight per cent to 14.5 million, with the reduction being equally distributed between its home market in South Africa and the rest of the continent.