{"id":853583,"date":"2026-03-11T10:55:58","date_gmt":"2026-03-11T08:55:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=853583"},"modified":"2026-03-11T12:11:52","modified_gmt":"2026-03-11T10:11:52","slug":"big-changes-coming-for-dstv-owner-including-content-pricing-and-job-cuts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/business\/853583\/big-changes-coming-for-dstv-owner-including-content-pricing-and-job-cuts\/","title":{"rendered":"Big changes coming for DStv, including content, pricing and job cuts"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

New Multichoice owner, Canal+, has unveiled a R1.9 billion “boost plan” for the struggling South African group, which includes revisions to content, pricing structures and offering voluntary severance to certain employees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reporting its first set of results as the new Multichoice parent, Canal+ noted that it had emerged from a challenging period, tail-ended by the successful acquisition of the African media giant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canal+ took control of Multichoice in September 2025 following a lengthy acquisition process. The deal was valued at over R50 billion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The resultant group is a 42 million subscriber media giant, pulling in R164 billion in revenue and EBITDA of over R20 billion (all reported in Euro equivalents).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the overall group, excluding Multichoice, reported positive gains\u2014such as 0.9% revenue growth and strong cash generation\u2014the picture for the South African operation is one of decline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The French media giant isolated Multichoice’s results and provided an operational overview, highlighting its recent struggles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After experiencing impressive growth from 2010 to 2023, Multichoice has faced challenges since, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These include the combined effects of macro-economic factors, a difficult transition to OTT with the expensive failure of Showmax, and strong inflation across most cost items.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This negatively impacted its profitability.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canal+ noted that Multichoice attempted to address the situation with short-term measures, but these negatively affected the subscriber base<\/strong><\/a>, worsening the original profitability issues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continuing this trend, revenues decreased by \u20ac142 million (6%) from \u20ac2,542 million in 2024 to \u20ac2,400 million in 2025, driven by a decline in its subscriber base from 14.9 million to 14.4 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2026, Multichoice is facing a R2.7 billion negative impact from the inertia of its subscriber base driving a decrease in revenues, and from cost inflation, it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Despite the challenges, Canal+ said that Multichoice has the potential to turn things around, and in line with this goal, it has compiled a \u20ac100 million (approximately R1.9 billion) “boost plan” for the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The boost plan is structured around four main pillars: content, commercial offers, sales, and operational restructuring.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Turning Multichoice around<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Pillar 1: Content<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In terms of content, Canal+ said it wants to offer “the most compelling content” on the African continent, which will include joint productions, in-house channels and global partnerships.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It said that key sports rights remain a cornerstone of this plan, while thousands of hours of local African content are produced annually.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The plan includes scaling international content and sharing content and rights across the group.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Pillar 2: Commercial offers<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The group wants to streamline and simplify the different “commercial propositions” offered, with clearer pricing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It noted that Multichoice currently offers up to 17 packages, with varying fees and five decoders. It aims to rationalise all the brands, which will aid in more targeted marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bleeding into the third pillar, the group wants to lower the cost of entry through equipment subsidies, which will expand its distribution network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Pillar 3: Sales<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Canal+ said it will launch an aggressive acquisition campaign with the aforementioned subsidies, as well as through more effective sales and marketing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This includes recruiting over 1,000 salespeople “on the ground” across all of Multichoice’s markets to accelerate subscriber growth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Pillar 4: Restructuring<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

The final pillar focuses on operations, which will see the group adopting best-practice models across all Multichoice’s markets, standardising operations and shifting the group to a sales-focused model.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To do so, Canal+ will lean into pillar 3\u2014hiring new salespeople\u2014while also initiating a voluntary severance plan across support functions at Multichoice. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It will also launch a restructuring programme at Irdeto, Multichoice’s technology and cybersecurity company. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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Canal+ said these planned changes are consistent with the commitments it made during the acquisition of Multichoice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They also align with the group’s ambition to streamline certain functions while investing more in activities that directly support the group’s growth and business development. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“These changes will be enacted in compliance with the social procedures of the relevant jurisdictions,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Canal+ expects to complete a secondary inward listing on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) by the first half of 2026, allowing South African investors to become shareholders in the combined group.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Canal+ has unveiled a R1.9 billion “boost plan” for Multichoice, including revisions to content, pricing structures and offering voluntary severance for certain employees.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":845838,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9872],"tags":[6633,78,1253],"class_list":["post-853583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","tag-canal","tag-dstv","tag-multichoice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=853583"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853583\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":853617,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/853583\/revisions\/853617"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=853583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=853583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=853583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}