Broadcasting5.09.2022

BritBox South Africa customers are “rabid” streamers

South African BritBox subscribers are among the service’s most avid users, the company’s global CEO Reemah Sakaan says.

Sakaan recently spoke with MyBroadband about the service’s growth and plans in South Africa.

BritBox originally made its local debut in early August 2021, joining a roster of international video streaming services.

The service offers content from two UK television powerhouses — BBC and ITV — and has grown to roughly 2.2 million subscribers globally.

Sakaan is responsible for the overall strategy and operations of BritBox globally.

She said the first year in the South African market had provided an influx of insight and information to the BritBox team.

“We’ve been delighted by the performance, particularly by the content performance and our line-up,” Sakaan stated.

“We started with a great slate and have built a regular drumbeat of really fantastic new and original content, a lot of it our own originations.”

While Sakaan could not share subscriber numbers for South Africa, she said local subscribers had become “uber-fans”.

“South Africa has been amongst the most ‘rabid’ in terms of overall volume, hours, and minutes [streamed] of any market in the world,” Sakaan said.

Shows like The Cleaner, Sister Boniface, Why didn’t they ask Evans, and BritBox’s Originals have been particularly popular.

“Every time we introduce one of our BritBox Originals, it rockets to the top.”

“We keep breaking our own records in terms of the number of hours streamed every month and with every new show launch.”

The Cleaner stars Greg Davies as a state-certified cleaning technician, who has to remove any signs of death from crime scenes

At the time of publication, there were 163 titles in the BritBox catalogue in South Africa.

While that might not sound like much compared to the thousands of titles offered by Netflix or Amazon Prime Video, Sakaan said it would take three-quarters to a full year to watch all of the content non-stop.

Sakaan said BritBox wanted to avoid an evident frustration with some other streaming services — choice fatigue.

“We see it a lot. You hit a streaming service, and some of them look like a video ‘jukebox’. You have to be a determined viewer [to choose something to watch],” Sakaan said.

For this reason, BritBox was focused on being clear about what content is new, original, and must-watch and taking a more curated approach.

“There is no algorithm working in the background trying to ‘manipulate’ or show you what to watch,” said Sakaan.

“These [recommendations] are built out for South African audiences based on their performance and what we’ve seen.”

Sakaan said that while BritBox was consistently adding new and exclusive content, it would also trim content people are not watching as often.

“The audience are telling us what they want to watch and what they will come to,” she stated.

Sakaan said BritBox’s immediate plans in South Africa was to increase awareness around the service and how it works.

BritBox is also working on extending its reach by building partnerships, although she could not share more information on the nature of these at this stage.

In terms of app features, Sakaan said BritBox was fast-tracking the ability to download movies and shows for offline viewing later.

That is to address a problem unique to the South African market — load-shedding — which often leaves people without an Internet connection.

Upcoming releases

Sakaan also shared some of BritBox’s content slate for the next few months.

It includes the following highlights:

  • Murder in Provence – September 2022
  • The Dry – October 2022
  • The Long Call – November 2022

Key returners in the coming months:

  • Bloodlands Season 2 
  • Doc Martin Season 10 
  • Professor T Season 2 
  • The Larkins Season 2 
  • The Cleaner Season 2 
  • A range of classic British movies, by the end of the year (Elizabeth, Notting Hill, About a Boy, Atonement, Billy Elliot)

BritBox Originals:

  • Stonehouse — Early 2023
  • The Confessions of Frannie Langton — 2023
  • Sanditon Season 3 — 2023

Now read: Netflix will include some ad-free content with its ad-supported subscription

Show comments

Latest news

More news

Trending news

Sign up to the MyBroadband newsletter