If you were waiting for a good enough reason to ditch DStv, now’s your chance. Showmax has officially started showing local and international sport matches in full. That means no more magazine shows and highlights clips only, but the capability to watch live games and a stockpile of pre-recorded games.
The best part? For now, the price for a Showmax subscription will remain R100 per month, so you won’t pay anything extra to view these matches. The new sports content includes live streams of South African matches in the ICC Cricket World Cup and SuperSport Rugby Challenge matches.
Pause, play, live stream
All the sports content will be neatly placed in a new sports section (currently labelled ‘beta’). This section features extended highlights from major sports events, and a selection of magazine shows, which will be available both live and to catch up later. Magazine sections will include, among other things, In Touch, The Dan Nicholl Show, and #borntorugby.
“Adding sport to Showmax is something fundamentally new for us and it’s a big deal. We’re preparing for a future when uncapped data is affordable to all in Africa and video on demand becomes the norm. We’ve been delivering TV series and movies for almost four years and continue to see strong growth in usage. Sport is the obvious next target and the only way to do that properly is to be able to stream it live,” says CEO of MultiChoice’s Connected Video division, Niclas Ekdahl.
According to Showmax, the sports content is already available on “…most Showmax apps and platforms except for Apple TV, Xbox and PlayStation, and some smart TVs…” We’ve reached out to Showmax for clarity on which smart TV’s won’t have access. Apparently, support for these will be added in the coming months.
[EDIT: Showmax has come back to us saying that, “All the smartphone and tablet apps are supported – Android and iOS, and all the web browsers that Showmax works on are supported – it’s basically just Apple TV, the gaming consoles and some smart TVs that aren’t currently supported. Samsung 2017 onwards TVs are supported.” So basically, if you can see the sports section, your device is supported.]
