Ever since Canal+ acquired MultiChoice, it’s fought an uphill battle. Struggling against DStv’s steadily declining reputation isn’t easy, especially when the product in question so heavily relies on convincing customers that, yes, installing a piece of hardware that’ll show you the same five Friends episodes is worth the high price, actually.
Canal+ fighting a losing battle
It makes sense, then, that MultiChoice’s DStv, under new ownership, has recently stepped up its game. It needs subscribers; otherwise, what did the company just spend R125/share on? Data from MultiChoice reveals that DStv was bleeding subscribers — around 1.2 million in total — from March 2024 to March 2025. To make matters worse, new data from Canal+ reckons the losses actually accelerated as it navigated a buyout deal.
To the tune of roughly 1.4 million subscribers between the end of June 2024 and June 2025, to be precise. This subscriber decline obviously came with similar troubles for MultiChoice’s financials. The report showed a R4 billion decline in revenue for the financial year ending 31 March 2025 (via TechCentral).
But Canal+ isn’t worried. It believes that with the scale of DStv, it can achieve a turnaround and get more people on board with what it calls an “underpenetrated African pay-TV market”.
“[The group will] offset higher subscriber acquisition costs through synergies and a granular focus on optimal distribution. [We will also] enhance the customer value proposition by strengthening the content line-up through sharing content across platforms … [and] set ambitious growth targets and incentivise teams accordingly,” Canal+ said in its presentation.
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The odd promotion that Canal+ has introduced in recent months may be a good way of enticing customers to stick around, but it’ll need quite a bit more to convince others — especially in the face of far cheaper streaming services like Netflix or Amazon Prime. Lowering prices, or spinning off SuperSport content, may be one way to do it, but it could also risk leveraging what is arguably its biggest asset, and the reason DStv is still around today.
To be fair, that’s easier said than done. How it plans to keep pace in an overstuffed landscape will be interesting to see, though we can expect DStv’s underlying technology to see an eventual upgrade. MultiChoice Group CEO David Mignot recently highlighted the importance of technology on its path to scale and remain competitive.
“Technology is another, more hidden factor that is just as key [as content production]. If you take MultiChoice, they had to go to an American company, Comcast, to acquire the technological stack required to provide a new mode of consumption via OTT (over-the-top) services for Showmax,” Mignot told the tribunal at the time.
The company believes it’s still on track to have 40 million subscribers globally under its wing before the end of 2025, and MultiChoice will be key in hitting that milestone. It eventually plans to raise that figure to between 50 and 100 million, but hasn’t yet provided any reasonable target dates.
