Major changes coming to DStv good news for subscribers
The recent acquisition of MultiChoice by French broadcaster Canal+ is already sounding promising.
MultiChoice has been through its fair share of ups and downs in recent years.
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The organisation operates in 50 countries across sub-Saharan Africa and has 19.3 million subscribers. It includes Africa's premier sports broadcaster, SuperSport, and the DStv satellite television service.
In May 2025, South Africa's competition authority announced that it had approved the buyout of Africa's largest pay-TV enterprise by France's Canal+.
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This comes after MultiChoice reported a pretax loss of R706 million ($38 million) for the year ended March 2024, citing weak local currencies and a decline in subscribers.
With Canal+ having completed its takeover, the largest-ever for the French company, it seems that things are going to be turning in a more positive direction for DStv.
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According to BusinessTech, the combined group aims to position itself as a major force in the global media industry.
For many South Africans, it feels like DStv has been struggling to keep up with the times, but many don't want to let go of the service because of its sports channels.
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Canal+ now controls all MultiChoice operations, including DStv, DStv Stream, GOtv, and Showmax, and their plan is simple.
The company's next step is to consolidate these services under a single digital platform, offering local and international programming.
We want to make it as convenient and pleasant as possible for our subscribers to access all this great content from companies all over the world, as well as the local sports and general entertainment content. Eventually, the vision should be close to including all of this content in one super app.
With viewers shifting more towards on-demand streaming rather than traditional satellite services, this plan seems fitting.
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Canal+ not only brings the financial support of a large European broadcaster, but also its extensive content library.
Saada aims to compete with international streaming services, including Netflix, Amazon, and Disney.
MultiChoice content is incredible. We will have the ability to use the strengths of the two groups. We have the biggest library of European content, including a lot of American content, like 9,000 movies.
Canal+ currently produces approximately 4,000 hours of African content in 15 languages each year, while MultiChoice produces around 6,000 hours of local content annually.
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Mignot added that the expanded catalogue will allow the company to distribute African and international productions more widely by translating and adapting them for different markets.
Combined, we will roughly provide 10,000 hours per year in 20 to 35 languages. So, in a 10- to 15-year period, we are building up a catalogue of more than 100,000 to 150,000 hours.
As part of their review, Canal+ are assessing whether to continue running the existing streaming services (Showmax, DStv Stream, Canal+ online platform) separately or merge them into one.
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