Pay per view operator, Multichoice Group, has blamed Nigeria’s harsh economic condition as active DStv subscribers in the country declined.
The company stated this in its financial result for the year ended March 31, 2024. It said the decline in Nigeria affected its overall subscriber database leading to a 18 per cent decline for the year.

While the total subscription figure for Nigeria is not stated as it is lumped with other operating units outside South Africa tagged as ‘Rest of Africa’ (RoA), Multichoice reported that the 18 per cent decline in Nigeria brought the RoA’s total active subscribers down by 13 per cent to 8.1 million from 9.3 million in 2023.

“The group’s 9 per cent decline in active subscribers was mainly due to a 13 per cent decline in the Rest of Africa business as mass-market customers in countries like Nigeria had to prioritise basic necessities over entertainment, while the South African business showed more resilience with a 5 per cent decline,” the company stated.

Blaming the decline in Nigeria on the economy despite implementing price increments three times in the last year, the company said: “We’ve just published our results for the past financial year, which ended in March 2024. The year has been like no other in terms of economic turmoil, but we showed resilience and navigated significant headwinds – managing our business with focus, dedication, and tenacity.”

It, however, noted that the involvement in local content help the company to navigate economic headwind.
“We are responsive and agile – this embodies who we are at MultiChoice! We swiftly adapted our operational activities to ensure we could deliver on our strategic objectives. This involved shifting our focus from subscriber growth to preserving profitability and cash flows, including the implementation of retention and cost-saving initiatives. We executed well, and I would like to thank each of you for your efforts, your continued passion and your hard work!

“Four years ago, we embarked on a transformative journey to become Africa’s entertainment platform of choice. We developed a strategy to expand beyond video entertainment to offer a broader selection of entertainment and scalable tech-based consumer services, so we could cater for our customers’ evolving needs and generate new revenue streams in the process. Today our business is comprised of three core segments that are fully operational: video entertainment, interactive entertainment, and fintech.

“Volatile and weaker local currencies, power challenges in markets like South Africa, and a weak consumer environment due to rising inflation and high interest rates, created an extremely challenging environment for the group’s customers and operating segments. Nonetheless, MultiChoice South Africa achieved a trading profit margin of 26 per cent, while MultiChoice Africa increased trading profit by 48per cent. We also successfully launched Showmax 2.0, SuperSportBet and Moment, all of which are now generating revenues and supporting our future growth prospects.

“We are the largest producer of original content on the African continent and remain committed to creating and growing authentic African stories. We produced over 6 500 hours of local content, to bring our local content library to 84 000 hours of content. More than half of our general entertainment budget is spent on local content,” the company said.

Shaka Ilembe was Africa’s biggest TV series. Filmed entirely on location in South Africa, it is the culmination of the contribution of more than 8 000 people. The premiere episode attracted over four million viewers and it was the top-performing show in its timeslot with an audience share of 45 per cent
“We launched three new proprietary channels in Ethiopia, Uganda and Mozambique, and produced content in Africa’s fourth most spoken language, Oromoa. Other highlights included Reyka season 2, Devil’s Peak and White Lies, while Spinners, Original Sin: My Son The Killer, and Catch Me a Killer were popular on our streaming platforms.”

It also said SuperSport continues to bring fans the best of sports from across the globe. In the past year, “we broadcast over 34 000 action-packed sports events, more live sport than any other broadcaster in the world. Highlights of the year were Rugby World Cup, Cricket World Cup, Netball World Cup, FIFA Women’s World Cup and AFCON.

“SuperSport Schools continues to grow strongly and more than doubled its registered user base during the year. Showcasing South Africa’s talent of the future, the platform displayed 49 000 hours of live programming across 43 different sports, covering 1,100 schools and 14,500 teams.

“We are purposefully pursuing our vision of becoming Africa’s entertainment platform of choice with determination and vigour. Significant progress has been made towards achieving this strategic objective.

Showmax successfully relaunched across 44 markets in sub-Saharan Africa on Peacock’s world-class platform. Almost 100 per cent of the eligible customer base was migrated to the new Showmax platform, and 88 per cent of those migrated had reactivated their accounts in the seven weeks to year-end.

“Several of our other products and services also performed well. DStv Stream grew its active users by 139%, active policies in DStv Insurance increased by 19 per cent and revenue by 35 per cent, while DStv Internet active users grew by 90 per cent and revenue by 160 per cent.”

As the economic landscape remains uncertain, “we also need to keep improving on our business efficiency. We have set ourselves a cost savings target for this year – and we need everyone’s support and contribution to hit this target.

“Our combined efforts will put our business in a strong position to prosper once the macro-economic environment stabilises – so let’s make this year a memorable one!”