Broadcasting27.10.2016

ShowMax CEO reveals what keeps him up at night

john kotsaftis

ShowMax launched in South Africa on 19 August 2015, and has significantly improved its service offering since then.

The improvements include prepaid vouchers, bundled broadband and ShowMax products, better app support, four content download options on its apps, and DStv Explora integration.

While these improvements make the service more attractive, it remains a challenge to promote a data-hungry video-on-demand service in a country where uncapped broadband is still a luxury.

MyBroadband interviewed ShowMax CEO John Kotsaftis to gain insight into the service and find out where it is going.

How has the uptake been since ShowMax launched in August 2015?

So far, so good. We’ve had roughly 20 million cumulative views since launch, so people are definitely using ShowMax. We’re also seeing helpful numbers on things like brand recognition, where we’ve recently taken the top spot in SVOD in South Africa.

Do you think there is a big enough market in South Africa for Netflix and ShowMax?

Definitely. The key point here is that it’s not a zero-sum game. The experience in other markets where Internet TV services are more established is that people typically subscribe to more than one service because they get different content on each.

On top of that, being able to differentiate your service helps – as an example, being able to download ShowMax shows to mobile devices isn’t something available on all other services.

What are the biggest challenges to launch and operate a VOD service like ShowMax in South Africa?

We know from other markets that there’s a clear correlation between the roll-out of affordable uncapped Internet packages and the uptake of Internet TV. The single biggest challenge in SA is that we’ve not yet hit the tipping point where the cost of data ceases to be a concern for subscribers.

We’re tackling this a number of ways, including having user-selectable streaming settings that cap hourly data usage to either 300MB, 700MB, or remain uncapped. This is also the reason we added downloads (4 different file sizes) to our mobile apps – at least then if you get connected to Wi-Fi at some point in the day then you can download shows to view later.

We’re also busy working on data deals for our customers – as an example, the Telkom Internet Entertainment Bolt-on package. We hope to be able to announce further deals in the near future.

What are the new innovations which people can look forward to from ShowMax?

Our engineering skunkworks is busy on a bunch of projects. We’re looking at everything from how to use machine learning to improve the recommendation engine to how new video codecs could help reduce data consumption.

You might also want to keep an eye out for some substantive user interface changes in the relatively-near future.

What keeps you awake at night regarding ShowMax?

This kind of business only survives in the long-term if it gets to scale. We’ve got a lot on the go to make that growth happen, and keeping it all organised and having the right structures in place to manage it is something I spend most days and some nights thinking about. I also spend a lot of time obsessing over content – how to get the best shows for our customers and how we can innovate around content.

Now read: Is ShowMax worth it?

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