South Africa’s DStv sees growth
December 8, 2014
By Chris Forrester
South Africa’s Multichoice/DStv operation is still exhibiting no shortage of new subscribers, despite increased competition from would-be rivals.
Multichoice says it has added another 342,000 new DStv subscribers in the first half of the financial year (to Sept 30) and its DStv ‘box office’ division is selling an impressive 600,000 movies a month.
The Naspers-owned broadcaster is now enjoying 8.4 million subscribing homes, and reported an 18 percent y-o-y growth (to revenues of R20.2 billion). PVR users now top 1.2 million subscribers.
“Pay-TV benefited from a 16 per cent increase in DStv subscribers year-on-year, and a 5 per cent increase in subscription rates in South Africa,” Naspers said. MultiChoice has spent R642 million during the 6 months on developing digital terrestrial television (DTT) and online video initiatives.
In a statement, Naspers said that it would be rolling out access to its PPV/box office service to other countries in sub-Saharan Africa soon.
Multichoice’s terrestrial DTT service – not yet available in South Africa – is active in 11 nations and claims 873,000 subs. GOtv is available in Ghana, Kenya, Malawi, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda and Zambia. “We continue to scale our transmission platform and place decoders in markets where we expect analogue switch-offs in the foreseeable future. These switch-offs, once implemented, should provide momentum for further subscriber growth,” said Naspers.