In Uganda, MultiChoice, the company that owns DStv and GOtv, has started testing weekly subscription options. If the trial is successful, the plans will soon be introduced in other markets.
Seven weeks after launching weekly subscriptions, MultiChoice Group CEO, Calvo Mawela revealed that the pay-TV provider should have a solid sense of the trial’s success within the following six months. The project aims to match clients’ cash flows with subscription periods, according to reports obtained by BrandSpur digital news platform.
If it is successful, the business would think about launching weekly subscriptions in other regions, such as Nigeria, which is its largest African market.
According to the CEO: “It’s a big change and we think when people are struggling, as we have seen, offering them weekly passes will help in the same way cellphone prepaid has changed the mobile industry.”
MultiChoice does not think that bundle offerings are a feasible structure, according to Mawela. However, he added the company was looking toward a product that would allow users to purchase a base product and add channels to it.
During the past two years, MultiChoice has lost 1.4 million subscribers in Nigeria. The company also disclosed a drop in its earnings for the fiscal year that concluded on March 31, 2025.
According to reports, MultiChoice sold Sanlam a 60% share in its insurance business in November of last year, which was largely responsible for the financial loss. During the evaluation period, MultiChoice’s revenue decreased by 9% annually, which it attributed to an 11% drop in subscription sales. Nonetheless, MultiChoice South Africa’s earnings rose annually over the review period, reaching 41.73 billion rand.
During that time, Showmax and MultiChoice’s revenue for the Rest of Africa fell precipitously. With weekly subscriptions, the business intends to keep clients in important areas like Nigeria. Both the number of 90-day active customers and the total number of subscribers decreased throughout its 2024–2025 fiscal year. 90-day active subscribers decreased by 11% to 18.59 million over the review period, while subscribers fell 8% from 15.69 million as of March 31, 2025, to 14.51 million.
The business is currently considering a new package to entice consumers to return to their decoders. A new subscription bundle that includes only the sports channels is being considered by MultiChoice in South Africa. In a Reuters interview on Thursday, June 12, a day after announcing a $45 million (or 800 million rand) loss, Mawela made this statement. He clarified that they had noticed a large number of consumers who only signed up for the premium package because of the sports channels eventually cancelled their subscriptions during the off-season.
Mawela revealed that the 2025 fiscal year will see the corporation make final judgments regarding the packaged sports-only plan. He said: “We’re considering all options as part of a broader product offering going forward.”
The Pay-TV behemoth has already contemplated splitting off its sports networks, according to experts. The DStv Flex offering, a 67-channel entertainment package that includes kids’, news, general entertainment, and free-to-air channels, began to pique its attention in September 2021. DStv was one of the numerous product concepts MultiChoice examined with consumers in July of last year, suggesting that it was no longer looking into
MultiChoice Group Limited has written off $21 million that was placed at Nigeria’s Heritage Bank after it was liquidated earlier this year. It was disclosed in the company’s interim financial statements for the half-year ending September 30, 2024. It was determined that the sum was irrecoverable after Heritage Bank’s operating license was revoked by the Central Bank of Nigeria, thus closing the bank.
